


An Agent of Chaos: A SHIELD Codex

by KhamanV



Series: SHIELD Codex [6]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, General Fic, Latveria, Murder Mystery, Mystery, SHIELD Agent Loki, Series, Spy drama, shield codex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-16 00:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 54,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3468455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KhamanV/pseuds/KhamanV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What starts as a gruesome handful of murders across the US East Coast becomes something far more dangerous when the truth behind them is revealed.  The Agents of SHIELD find themselves entangled in an international incident that could not only wipe them off the map, but possibly destabilize the entire world.  Only Director Coulson’s team and two of SHIELD’s most notorious agents can possibly change the odds.</p>
<p>But first one of them will have to be convinced to not kill the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Training Days

An Agent of Chaos: A Shield Codex

“ _There's terrible evil in the world.” ~ Watership Down_

. . .

1\. Training Days

. . .

The last bell of the week was going to start chiming in about fifteen minutes, and every single child squirming at their desk knew it. Mr. Stutgart gave them all his best rubbery, long-suffering smile, knowing from long experience that anything he tried to teach now was going to trickle into one ear and drizzle right out the other. They giggled at his cartoonish expression, wide in a pale and early-balding face. They were third graders and he was the 'cool teacher,' the one that let them use comic books for literature assignments so long as they could pick apart the story themes just as good as what their parents called 'real stories.' So they mostly considered him their big grown up ally, and he gave them as much courtesy in return.

“Okay, kids,” he said, his voice clipping just a bit in the clunky remains of a Germanic accent that the kids believed he could never quite get rid of. “We all know what time it is.”

More delighted shifting around. Summer was coming, just never fast enough as kid-time reckoned such things. If he couldn't tell by the rising temperature, he would know just by the jittery, uncontainable energy his class filled itself with after lunch every day. “For our last few minutes today, I would like you to take just a moment and note down your assignments for the weekend.” He waved to indicate the four-point list behind him on the board.

Dramatic groans met his order. “Now, relax.” He pointed at the kids in the front row with the piece of stubbly blue chalk in his hand. “Two of them will be quick; just read the brief overviews. The fourth one, yes...” More moaning. One dramatic little kid in the back row clutched at his throat and made a creaky gagging noise. Mr. Stutgart couldn't help but spare him a grin. “It's right up your alley, Stephen. Grim and creepy history.” Now big eyes were on him. “You kids are doing  _way better_ than a lot in your age group, so we're going to keep walking you through some interesting stuff you might not have learned about till later. Big kings, big queens, and big doings.”

He pointed at the name on the chalkboard. “Anyone want to give pronouncing that a shot?”

A hand flew into the air, the dark, marker-stained palm of one of his favorite students. Stutgart picked her out with a smile and a sharp point of his chalky hand. “Aimee.”

Her mouth worked. “Ivan... Vasee... vaseline-vitch?”

Laughter met the attempt and she flushed, annoyed but not embarrassed. Stutgart shushed the class with a look. “Very good try, Aimee. These names can be tough, but it's worth it to learn them.  _Vasilyevich._ ” He pitched his voice into a whisper and sounded out the individual syllables for them a few more times. _“_ We sometimes call him 'Ivan the Terrible,' but it's pretty complicated, kids. Through him we're going to do a rough overview on Russian history, back and forth through time and we're going to hit some tough topics on the way. You can do it. I believe in the power of your little, growing brains.” That got him some giggles.

He was going to get a few calls from parents over the weekend, but that was all right. He was used to it. By hitting their interest with some of the more gruesome bits of history – sanitized somewhat for the age group – he could drag them along through a lot of stuff other teachers in the district were having trouble with. And he was lucky. The superintendent had his back. Not a lot of teachers out there could say that. He grinned at his class, proud of them. “Write 'em down and you can start packing up.”

_“Yes, Mr. Stutgart.”_

He put his hands together and gave them that weird little European bow that was his trademark, a man content in the genuine love of his job and knowing how rare a thing that was. He ignored the still-sealed envelope laying on his desk and reminded himself to destroy it thoroughly before leaving the school. That was a relic of the past. He wanted nothing more to do with what the envelope's contents might portend. This was his life now.

Aimee, a cute little girl with brown eyes and tautly-braided black cornrows beamed at him as she tugged her Dora the Explorer backpack out from under the desk. “See you Monday!” she chirped, the words almost lost in the sudden racket of the final bell. He gave her a tiny, polite wave of farewell, never suspecting that she would be the last person to talk to him.

When the school spread the news on Monday to the stunned, suddenly hollow-feeling classroom, she was also the first to burst into hard and bitter tears.

. . .

Mr. Stutgart resettled the plain brown satchel under his arm, the combined visual of the old-school carryall bloated with scrawled pages of homework and his neutral toned sweater-vest outfit making him look like a man out of time. Or at least like an extra in an Indiana Jones movie, during the parts where the schools were dusty and filled with equally dusty academics. He sniffed his fingers once, a little annoyed that there was simply no way of dealing with the smallish trash incinerator in the old school building without coming away with a smell of grease and ash on the hands. But anyways, it was done. The unwanted reminder of old pasts was gone. Hopefully that would be the end of it. _They_ would let him go.

He passed under the gently fluttering leaves of a sycamore tree, spring smells filling his nose and under them was the creeping warmth of summer. The heart of South Carolina in the middle of May. He loved everything about his home.

And then he stopped cold in his ambling walk down the sidewalk towards his nearby house, looking curiously behind him while the neatly trimmed hair prickled sharp at the nape of his neck. Not all the old lessons were gone, but his instincts were maybe rusty now. They sprung at the wrong things sometimes. All he heard was some distant giggle, and the clap of a ball against the dirt of the school's playground on the other side of the treeline. “Must be nothing,” he muttered to himself. Who cared to creep after harmless Mr. Stutgart? He turned to start walking again, and then a minute later jerked to see if anything had appeared behind him.

There was nothing. A car idled up past him as he searched for anything out of place, and he examined that, too. No, just a woman on her way with her groceries. His usual route was a slow one. Not many lived down his lane and he liked the privacy.

Now completely convinced he'd heard nothing at all, he resumed his slow walk home.

He never heard the footstep when it finally came right up behind him, and his last sensation was the tiny pinch of the slender needle driving deep into his neck. It was quick and painless and in the end there was nothing but the spreading dark.

If he knew what was to be done with his body after, he would have been grateful to know this much.

. . .

Director Coulson shuffled the files in his hands, getting the thin digital tablet back to the top so he could hold it in place with his thumb. He wasn't actually taking in the scene he was walking into until he was about halfway through the common room his team liked to commandeer for general down time, and when he did, he paused for a long time to observe without saying anything.

In the rear of the room, May was silently reading a travel magazine and jotting down scratchy, detailed notes. Even odds whether she was planning a vacation or prepping for a possible future infiltration scenario. Close to her, Agent Simmons was fussing around with a digital tablet of her own. He knew she was still fretting over various readings from the old underground city, not to mention a few newer oddities that had since been laid on her desk. Mack and Fitz were visible down the hall, having some sort of amiable discussion meant for themselves. 

And then there was the dozy-looking Skye, sitting at a small table with a jar of mixed nuts in front of her while she stared at what was visible - from her perspective - of the mostly prone Loki on the couch. He was clearly off in his own world with a book balanced in one hand. His other arm rested atop his head, the fingers flexing now and then as the alien man read silently.

Skye visibly calculated the short arc she was going to need to chuck an unshelled peanut at the back of Loki's skull. By the carefulness of her motion, Coulson realized with a lift of his brow that this was not the first nut to take flight today. She was only readjusting based on prior avionics testing. Without a word, he watched the legume leave her hand and whip through the air in a gentle trajectory – only to be caught deftly in a pale hand by the once-too-proud demigod. He never glanced back, just instinctively seemed to know it was coming.

As Coulson arched an eyebrow, Loki proceeded to eat the peanut without complaint. He turned a page in his book, then dropped one arm lightly atop his head again. Phil felt he should probably at least make a token effort to be the adult in the room. He tried to pitch for a chiding tone. “You know, Agent Skye, you could just pass him the jar like a normal person.”

“Where's the fun in that?” Skye popped a couple hazelnuts into her own mouth, glancing irreverently up at him while she chewed. She covered her mouth when she yawned.

He shook his head and let it go, waving his thin stack of paperwork. “Okay. Well, we've got a little investigative side job on our plates. What they call in the homicide business a 'red ball.' At least it'll be a change from the usual. May, want to come with me now? I'll want you as field lead on this one.”

May flipped the magazine shut at the sound of her name and slid away from the nook she'd been seated at, nodding once and then pausing almost imperceptibly as he followed it up. He only noticed because he'd been watching for it. “Agent Simmons. Agent Loki, you're on. Join us in the office in twenty.”

Skye reached forward and nudged at Loki's shoulder with a finger when the pair was gone. “Congratulations. It's graduation day, dude.” Then she leaned back and dug around in the jar for one of the prized, too-rare brazil nuts. “You want another peanut?”

“I think that news rates at  _least_ a pecan.” An arm, clad in a plain black SHIELD issue hoodie, flung over the back of the couch. Long fingers waggled at her in a request.

“Maybe it does, just maybe it does.” She rattled around in the snackjar, determined to at least find him a whole one and not one of those sad little slivers. She looked up to meet Jemma's wide eyes. “You want any?”

Jemma tugged at the lacy collar of her pale pink shirt by way of first response. “Ah, no, thank you. What's a 'red ball,' do you know?”

“Nothing  _you're_ not used to. Just a police nickname for what's usually a major league crime scene. Either a big personality involved or a serial killer, something like that. I used to watch a lot of cop shows when I lived in my van.” With a mutter of victory Skye dropped not one, but two whole pecan halves into the waiting palm. “Gonna be maybe some Hannibal Lecter style stuff for the new guy's first official outing, by the way Phil sounded.”

“Delightful, if indeed familiar,” murmured Simmons. “Well, I suppose I'll start getting my kit ready.” She stood up and nodded to Loki. “I'll meet you in the hall here in fifteen, we'll go up together. If that's alright.”

Loki didn't look up, sliding a bookmark into the pages of a dry if concise overview of early Nordic religions, his idea of vaguely humorous reading. “Of course,” he said, already contemplating what those hints might mean for the new life he'd willingly chosen. “That will be fine.”


	2. Cellular Plans

May handed the tablet back to Coulson, the salient points of the case finding firm ground in her mind. “You sure about this arrangement?”

“Dropping the trainee leash? Yeah, I am. You gonna give me the usual spiels of warning and misgiving?”

He was only moderately surprised by her response. “No. I've watched you process him through the system, although my position requires that I remind you that he's skipped most of the physical stuff that we typically require of a new agent.” She gave him one of her thin, wry smiles before crossing her arms tight against her jacket.

Phil tapped at the collar of his suit, atop where the once-fatal scar on his chest still lingered. “I don't think we'll learn anything from making him whale on a punching bag for an hour that we didn't already know.”

“Granted.”

“Not to mention everyone knows the second he starts waggling his fingers, the rules of what he _can_ do tend to change.”

“Also granted.” She gestured at the tablet, now making its way to the top of the Director's desk. Her voice became all business. “If you're sending Simmons with me then I assume we've already got access to the morgues?”

“Yeah. The FBI guy that tipped me to the situation did me a solid on that. It'll be part of the wide briefing.” She nodded as he continued. “So that'll be her role for you on this one, biological field tech. Standard, well inside her comfort zone. Everyone should get a light job once in a while. We've had enough weird galactic crap for a bit.”

“And Loki?”

“He's your generalist support, put him to use however you need. Now, part of what I think might be valuable going forward is that none of us should ever totally forget he's an alien. He's not gonna think exactly the way we do, so that means you've got some easy out of the box vision with him. Watch how he reacts to people and what they're saying. He might not always realize or care what's so different about his viewpoint, but you'll pull it out of him if you ask.” It was a tactic that worked well last year, at a tech conference back when the demigod was still devoted to the cause of general jackassery. He paused at the memory, realizing just how long ago that seemed now.

May considered that. “You're thinking of him as a possible profiler?”

“Sorta. It's one avenue, but why narrow it up too much? The guy's got like a thousand years worth of experience as an agent provocateur, basically, and knows ways of being a pain in the ass we've barely uncovered. Have fun. Make him someone else's pain if you need.”

“This is still so weird,” she muttered, mostly for herself.

“That's a day at the office,” he said, looking up at the pair of shadows drawing close to his door. Right on time.

. . .

The Director took his place at his desk as Simmons and Loki filed in, the young woman primly taking a seat on the opposite side of him and the tall figure in black picking a clean space of wall to lean back against. His long and wild hair was now combed relatively neatly back, his major concession towards looking humanly professional. The suits and other paraphernalia of being an agent were no trouble for him. The hair? Hell with it. Phil knew perfectly well he could illusion up a different look when a situation called for it. Not worth a fight. There'd been enough little snags just getting him used to the place.

May took the first round of the brief. “We've got three bodies, each recently killed at a public location in different places along the east coast, taken to an unknown secondary location for a purpose we haven't yet fully ascertained, and then left to be found. In or close to the public location they were removed from, as it happens. No witnesses to the removal or to the return. FBI crime lab is unable to identify the fatal agent used to kill, although two of the three initial autopsies identified a needle mark in the same place on the neck. We're sure the third has the same.”

Simmons reached forward to grab one of the files. “Is that what's bringing this to our door instead of leaving it a federal matter?” She looked at the top sheet overview and then up to the Director and the team lead in turn. “Unknown chemical agent, some new murder weapon?”

“It's a start,” said Coulson.

“What else?” asked Loki, glancing quickly over Simmons' shoulder to skim the notes. “Won't send a trio of your handpicked out for the grim results of some crusty needle.”

May and Coulson shared a look. Coulson tapped at the digital tablet, bringing it to life. “All three medical examiners are kinda weirded out about the state the corpses were found in. The FBI is no less weirded out, and an old friend in Quantico dropped a dime to me. I think they're pretty happy to have someone else wrangle it. Serial killers might be in their wheelhouse, but this went up a notch. Their psych profiles aren't coming up with anything they can hook into.”

Agent Simmons made a soft noise at the coldly professional photos, looking at the zipper-like lines across the torso and what they revealed inside. “Good lord,” she whispered. “They took everything out and put it right bloody back.” She looked up at the Director. “And then left the body where they first took it, bold as you please.”

“Three times, even,” said Coulson.

“That we know of,” added Loki, ever the obvious cynic.

“Yes. That we know of.”

“So the unknown actors were looking for something in either the abdomen or the thoracic cavity, is my first observation.” Simmons murmured, flicking through the rest of the series. While she'd gone an extra shade of pale at the condition of the bodies, her face was drawn tight into a clinical examination of what she could see. Missing nothing, looking for everything.

“Does look rather like someone rummaging through a bureau,” added Loki, now leaning down over her shoulder to peer more closely. His expression was only musing; the studious look of a man with no fear or disgust left to give for death's more grotesque displays.

“Well, _that's_ a visual. Not inaccurate, however. They were clean about it, but quick. You can tell by the haphazard rearrangement of the intestines.” Simmons flickered her gaze up to Agent May. “I'm assuming you'd like me to run another examination of the bodies, see what may have been missed by civilian examiners.”

May nodded, her finger tracing a line on a map laid on the desk. “We're going to start heading out to the most recent victim tonight. Closest business airport is in Columbia to the south, and the local public strip is beyond tiny, so we'll be driving. I don't want to take the Bus on this one anyway. The Director's already called ahead to advise the Newberry police that someone's coming in. We'll be presenting as federal authority, _not_ SHIELD, obviously, and if they check the creds, they'll pass muster. They're going to be too rattled to look close at us anyway; that part of South Carolina doesn't get much in the way of bad news.”

“Yes, this one.” Simmons tapped the top file, the first one she'd examined. “Hans Stutgart, do I have that correct?” Coulson nodded. “Anything odd about him or the others?”

May answered her. “We'll be bringing the case files along for all of us to look over, but no. Stutgart was a grade school teacher, no record of any kind. Came to America when he was twelve, naturalized citizen. The most dangerous thing about him was probably his lunchbag in the teacher's rec room. He seems like he was an egg salad kinda guy.”

“And the others?”

“One owned a gas station, the other was a nurse practitioner. All clean, no surface level connections to each other.” May reached down to pull the strewn files into a neat pile, giving Phil a glance. “I think we're ready to start.”

“Think so, too. Anything else, you can talk about it in the car.” Phil nodded to the pair on the other side of the desk. Simmons stood up, collecting the straightened pile up into her arms and giving Loki a look of nervousness – not actually due to him, but owing to the start of any new investigation. He lifted an eyebrow in response, less concerned with any of that than the pointed look he was getting from the Director. “We're done, although if I could get a moment with you, Loki...”

 . . .

The demigod resumed leaning against the back wall, his arms crossed loosely against his chest. One eyebrow arched, waiting for it.

“First official field outing under our watch. Rules won't be like Montana, you're going by our book now. You and Agent May going to have any problems?” The question was conversational, not tense. All this was implied in the agreements Loki made when Coulson brought him to the Playground a few months ago. Mostly he was looking for the style of the reaction.

The one he got was still mildly surprising in its offhandedness. “Why would I?” Loki studied the Director's prying face, zeroing in on the obvious and human concern. “Because I'm now to take orders from a woman instead of you directly?”

“I'm just double-checking. In our line of work, I'd love to say it's the sort of thing that's never happened. I can't. There's a little history there.”

Loki snorted. “Unlike some amongst my Asgardian countrymen, I have few issues with obeying a lady when her command is duly earned. Particularly one who is known to be well capable in battle. One such as this _was,_ in fact, my own teacher. Long ago.” His tone drifted low for a moment before he waved it away. “Regardless even of that, I have no doubts that Agent May is forever capable of finding some fresh method of taking my head off my body and then retaining the skull to keep little trinkets in. She permits me because you ask it and to my own surprise has allowed herself to be practically _cordial_ since. I'd be foolish to test that overmuch.” He shrugged. “I said I'd abide by your rules, and I shall.”

“Good answer.” Phil gestured at him with a pen. “Any questions?”

“I've none I can find. If you had some other duty in mind alongside this one, you'd ask it, not request me to fumble around for it in awkward conversation.”

“Not on this. May'll run you on your paces, not that I think you'll get winded.” Another dry snort met that. “Good luck. Have fun. Do _not_ play ' _Are We There Yet_ ' with May tonight.” Phil grinned. “She hates that.”

“Duly noted,” said the demigod, before slipping quietly out the door.

 . . .

Loki took a bundled equipment bag from a pile Simmons tugged into the bay and tossed it lightly, deftly, into the back of the freshly washed black SUV. The weight of the bag made the vehicle creak when it landed, though the demigod never so much as swayed under what he regarded as a meager load. The occasional little daily reminder of what the 'new' agent really was.

“Be gentler with that next one, please. I've got the slide cases strapped in firmly, I think, but you never know.” As requested, the next duffel found its place more smoothly. “Thank you,” finished Simmons, noticing movement out of the corner of her eye and turning towards it. “Skye?”

“Hey,” she said, her hands shoved in her pockets. “Ran down to give Loki his new phone.” The sound of his name brought the sleek black-haired head out of the back of the van to look at her. “Standard issue; full spread of wireless, GPS, all the Gs, LTE, you got it. Phil hates unnecessary long distance calls, blah blah, I programmed in a list of all the pizza places I could find on the East Coast because that's just a necessity. When you get back I can push in the rest of the US regions.”

Simmons giggled and moved out of the way so Skye could approach. She tugged the new phone – a smoothly modified Starkphone - out of her pocket to toss it to Loki, knowing he'd snap it out of midair easily. “I also preloaded a few albums onto it,” she said, grinning even though she couldn't read his blank expression.

Loki tapped the screen out of curiosity and swept down to find the music folder, his eyes narrowing at the pale blue album cover, sprinkled with bright white snowflakes. The sharp green-grey gaze drifted up to Skye's face where it narrowed further, the sarcastic response unspoken but clear – _Really?_

Skye stepped back, the grin getting bigger at her own joke and at the knowledge that she was going to get away with it. “ _The cold never bothered me anywayyy,”_ she sang, only a little off-key, dropping a wink as his expression become one of amused but genuine annoyance.

“You're going to pay for that someday,” Loki muttered, shoving the phone into the pocket of his hoodie with a crisp gesture of irritation. The knowledge that he was perhaps not _technically_ Asgardian was long since out among the core team by some insistent necessity of paperwork and forward planning; a routine of blood tests and genetic work to ensure that if something happened even to him in the field, they might be able to help. Not that the requirement went over well at the time.

It bought his human companions some leeway on what he regarded as a tense and combative topic that their response really was, in line with Coulson's insistence, _who cares?_ He was 'Asgardian,' their bizarre but promised ally, and that was that. The unwelcome word _monster_ was simply not in their collective lexicon.

Privately, that attitude actually bought the humans a great deal of leeway since his arrival.

Skye was ever fated to be the boundary pusher, however. “No, I'm not,” she chirped, now still grinning at a movie night memory of his black silhouette hunched in a oversized chair as a little blue Disney alien cried for a real family of his own. Loki spent the short film drinking a rather astonishing number of beers and holding his vocal opinion of the ugly duckling fable tightly to himself. He said almost nothing when the alien on the screen happily accepted his place on Earth, only excusing himself for the night when the credits and their joyful snapshot epilogue were done.

But he'd kept the plush Stitch toy Skye gave him as a housewarming gift. That said a few things.

He sighed at her. “And how do you figure that miracle?”

“I _also_ put on those Queen albums you don't seem to give up on. And yes, _Princes of the Universe_ is in there. What's the deal with that, anyway?”

“It's nothing,” he snapped, no malice in it. He still pulled the phone out to check, mollified by the expanded track listing. Then he went back to sorting the cargo in the SUV.

Skye shot the puzzled Simmons a look. “All I know is, I actually caught him watching _Highlander_ in the rec room a few weeks ago when most of the crew was asleep. I think he thought it was a comedy.”

“It wasn't?” came the scornful voice from the depths of the car.

“Hell, maybe these days it is.” She shrugged. “Just please don't tell me you think that's the height of human cinema.”

“I don't think much of it in general,” came the weary mutter. “Anything else?”

“May doesn't stop for potty or snack breaks unless you beg and plead, so finish up anything you gotta do before she pulls out of the driveway.”

" _Noted._ Gods.”

Skye and Simmons shared a silent giggle at the muted exasperation.


	3. The Land Before Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features a brief autopsy scene, which I've tried to portray as non-gruesome and with as much clean, clinical distance as possible. It's way less detailed than your average episode of CSI, I promise. Nonetheless, autopsy scene.

_Newberry, South Carolina_

Chief Broward watched Groquist, his dinosaur of a medical examiner, shift at the window. The ME's short, pudgy fingers reached up to pinch apart the straight slats of the cheap off-white blinds, squinting against the morning sun. “Feds are here, Chief,” said Groquist. His rumbling old man's voice was full of disapproval. “Hell, I remember the days when they'd show up and it'd be a pile of fat old turds in off the rack grey suits, falling out of a rented Caddy. Least you knew what you were getting.”

“Was that before or after the meteor killed off the rest of your kind, Groquist?” Broward rubbed two fingers across his forehead, well past giving a damn. The old jackass still had three years before forced retirement. Broward didn't know if he could hold out that long. Guy wasn't bad at his job in the least, but his attitude could rust a Deere.

The ME popped him a middle finger, determined to keep drawling. “Before. Christ. One's pretty much a kid. Chinese lady drivin' the van. Got one guy with 'em, and he looks like Mr. New York metro himself.” He let the blinds go, shaking his head. “Hell. This is gonna be a mess.”

“It's already a mess, that's why we're playing along with the big shots. I got half the town's PTA calling me every two hours. They want somebody's butt in a sling for makin' their kids cry. Going federal ought to at least buy me a couple days of peace.” Broward got up from his desk with a sigh, buttoning his suit jacket back together and uncomfortably aware that it was, in fact, one of those cheap off-the-rack numbers. County patrol paychecks didn't afford much in the way of Brooks Brothers. “Go set up the morgue. I'll meet the guests.”

“Ask when the kid's curfew is. I don't wanna get a call from her mom.” The ME started shuffling out of the office, hands shoved in his pockets.

“Jesus, Groquist. Get the hell out of my face.” His tone held another message –  _don't give the feds the same horsecrap you give me, or so help me we're gonna tumble._ Part of him wished the fossil would. Then when the agents bitched, he'd finally have a lever to shove under the guy. Get a new ME, someone from the same century everyone else was currently living in.

Three years to go. Groquist was gonna be a pain in his ass for every one of them. The chief shook his head and tapped an air freshener as he passed out of the room. Force of habit. Clear the air one way or another.

. . .

“You the folks from up Quantico?”

Agent May turned away from the rustling at the back of the van to look the police chief over. Youngish face on a tall frame, hair heading straight from a too-youthful peppering brown to grey middle age, his hands in cheap suit pockets. He looked already worn out. “That's us. You're Chief Broward?”

“Yes'm.” The Chief looked her over in the same way she'd just done to him, giving a polite nod. He arched an eyebrow when the other pair showed up from behind the anonymous black SUV, gaze flickering all the way up to the startlingly pale face of the man in the suit with his short dark hair combed neatly back. New York metro indeed, he had to give Groquist  _that_ one. He gave a briefer glance to the pretty young woman in a pale blue shirt and there he was reminded that his ME was just an asshole. Young, yes, but she had a competent and ready face. “Welcome to Newberry, sorry about the circumstances. You folks have a good drive down?”

“Just fine.” May stuck her hand out. “I'm Agent May.”

Broward took it, blinking once at the firm grip. He had an immediate hunch this lady could eat Groquist alive. He felt a lot better. “And your team?”

She indicated in turn. “Agent Simmons, who will be handling our examination.” The young woman gave a polite nod in lieu of a shake, her hands full with a duffel bag. “And Agent Lucas, who'll be assisting her in the lab.”

Broward's gaze drifted up to the angular face again. “Sir,” he said, reflexively polite. He stuck his hand out and found the meeting grip cold and iron-like. The silent smile he got in return was pleasant, even warm. And also somehow subtly creepy. Broward cleared his throat and broke his stare. None of his companions found the tall guy weird, so he made himself get over it. “Well, you all don't seem to be the type to screw around with pleasantries. My ME's getting the morgue ready right now, so I'll lead you down?”

May turned to nod at her backup. “Them, yes. I'd like to go over the file with you and whatever officers were called to the scene in your office.”

“That'll be fine, ma'am. Got my calendar cleared all up for you.”

. . .

Groquist kept eyeballing the young woman as he finished making sure the examination table's elevating pedestal was still locked firmly to the floor. He kept going, as he had since unlocking the examination room. “Now, I don't want to overstate or push my place, miss, but we're pretty far behind the newfangled deals the feds can afford. We're manual around here. Old-fashioned, like. Don't know what they teach these days.”

Agent Simmons drifted around the room, her quick gaze picking out the fastidious organization of the autopsy tools and where all the electronics were plugged in. Then she turned to regard the matte steel door that held the late Mr. Stutgart, not needing to look at the local ME. “This is all perfectly familiar to me, sir, please don't worry on my account.” She plucked a pair of latex gloves from a box on the counter next to a sink and snapped them on with well-practiced confidence. The room stank of the usual antiseptics, covering thoroughly the other smells that permeated the business of death.

The examiner blinked again at the crisp English accent, ignoring the dark shadow next to the door. “'Course. Well, you got my assessment.” He tapped the folder on another long shelf beside him. “You need a hand getting the body to the table? He's kinda heavy, and summer's been comin' in. Kind of a rough combination on the senses, hon. The Carolinas ain't always nice to the dead.”

She shot him a brief glance as the figure shifted impatiently behind the medical examiner. “I've got it, sir. Thank you  _very_ much.” She beamed by way of a sincere attempt to shoo him out the door.

Not a complete idiot, Groquist let himself out, sparing an unreadable glance for her fancy-looking 'assistant.'

Loki pushed the door shut behind the old examiner, latching its lock shut with a little jolt of magic just to be privately tweaky. “Is that common?” he asked, voice falsely mild.

Simmons looked over her shoulder at him, fingers curling around the freezer's handle. “How's that?”

“The subtly insulting tone he had, talking to you. How dare you be a fraction of his age and  _not_ require his, no doubt, robust experience? What an atrocity,” he droned. “Kids these days. Heavens forfend and majestic weeping.” He put a hand atop his chest to underline his words, then adjusted his tie with an unconscious tug.

She tutted, a little amused by his sardonic performance. “It's background noise, Loki.”

“It's rudeness. I have no trouble being rude, it must be confessed, but not unnecessarily.” He unfolded from the wall, careful to mark where the low-hanging lights would be in his way. “Did you wish assistance moving him to the table?”

She tugged open the narrow freezer cube, looking at its contents. “Well, since you have the taste to ask  _politely,_ do please. Here, there's that metal plate under the bag. Help me tug that.”

The bodybag made its gentle journey to the examination table, where Simmons unzipped it to reveal the victim. She stepped back instinctively, breathing through her mouth until she readjusted to the smell. A finger tapped towards the box of gloves. “Please get a pair of those, I'll ask you to help as I re-open the torso.” She looked up at him, his expression still mild and unaffected by the new odors. “Probably more boxes underneath the shelf there, if you think those will be too small.”

. . .

Loki's basic strength made a few things gruesome but more efficient. Pulling the torso open for the start of a fresh reassessment was no trouble with him handling the tools under her guidance, and as a grim bonus, he never once looked like he was about to toss his cookies. Simmons glanced up at him as she examined organs in turn. “I had teachers at the academy that would give a lot for an assistant like this.”

The compliment was absorbed with a considering look. “I think they'd change their minds once they realize how sorts like me get jaded enough to be uncaring about these matters. Long time and long violence.”

She inclined her head, considering that. Her eyes were thoughtful behind the protective plastic goggles. “Perhaps.” She set aside the pair of toothed forceps, looking for a fresh and smaller set and being careful to not jostle the sample vial that she'd taken near the neck wound for later testing. “Pragmatic types in this narrow little industry, however. A few might still bid.” A little chuckle as she deftly moved a kidney. “Particularly anyone that's been a few turns at being a combat medic. Needs must, and all that.”

“Like yourself?”

She shook her head. “I'm hardly one of those.”

“But you've done such work under fire.”

“Well, yes. But not really the same thing.” She shrugged, leaning in to peer. Then she pulled back to pick up a tiny penlight. “That might be interesting,” she said, her thumb on the control and her attention tightly focused. She pinpointed the narrow beam into a space in the lower cavity, behind the kidney she'd just adjusted. “Do me a favor and take a peek.”

“Entirely the same. As you yourself say, needs must. The why is less important, only that it must be.” He leaned in, sharp eyes that only appeared human narrowing to follow the light. “Yes. You've got a series of tiny holes. Pinpricks, essentially.” He reached in with a single gloved finger to prod gently. “I'd guess they might lead somewhere.” He leaned back as she picked up their digital camera, offering to take the light from her with an outstretched hand. He focused the light for her as she took a series of photos.

“Keep the light, please,” she said, setting the camera down with a distracted thunk and rustling for a set of much smaller forceps. “Now that's recorded, I'm going to see where this goes.”

He controlled the beam of light as she continued to slowly, cautiously follow the holes and the miniscule distortion they'd left in the flesh. “Right to the spine. And...” She nudged carefully, then gave a soft whistle. “Whatever it was this man's killer sought, they found it.” She reached up and took the light from him without looking, examining the edges of the tiny cut all but hidden behind one of the lowest vertebrae. “Do you see? Get the camera. Steady focus, go in tight. Okay... I'm going to pull it open  _very_ slightly to get an idea of the dimensions. My goodness.” She nodded. “Tiny, tiny work.”

“What was it?”

She set the light down, taking the camera from him to make sure the pictures were good. “He had a bundle of wiring, slight, damn near microscopic wiring inserted through his body. We're going to be here for a little bit; I want to know where else they pulled the cord from. I wager they went to the cortex at the very least. But that's settling out the borderlines – the important part is this slice, I think. That was their focus.” She looked up at him, looking through him as she thought quickly. “He had an implant. Chip, most like. Oh dear, that  _is_ our wheelhouse.” The gaze focused on him. “Miniaturization on this scale isn't too commonplace, and this was certainly not medical. Something else was going on.”

“So much for our pleasant little no-one teacher?” He arched a bemused eyebrow.

“And the station owner, and that poor nurse, like as not. I must definitely examine both if at all possible. But yes, Loki.” She took up the forceps again. “The body speaks as long as it can, if you listen. This man was murdered for a quite specific purpose.” She tutted. “Now we've the hard part of putting together why.”

. . .

May studiously ignored the offered coffee mug, scanning the print-out testimony of the attending officers to the crime scene for a fourth time. “And that's it. Nobody.”

“Last talked to a girl in his class, last seen by a soccer mom comin' back from the Food Lion, yes ma'am.” The cop looked tired and disheartened by the situation, darker creases forming under dark eyes. “Can't tell it to you any other way.”

“Walk me through one more time. Who called in the body?”

“Phelps, doing the morning mail. He's run early for decades, ma'am. Got halfway up the street and damn near gave himself a coronary when he saw Mr. Stutgart on the sidewalk. Been givin' that guy his ton of coupons and handful of bills for a long time.” The cop shook his short-cropped hair, pinching the thick bridge of his nose with two brown fingers. It was clear he was getting a stress headache from the rundown.

“Any record on Phelps?”

There was a soft, insulted inhale from behind her. Broward shot the detective a look, taking over the answer. “No, ma'am. Phelps is a town institution. He lives a few doors up from me. The kinda old guy that gives out full size candy bars at Halloween. I don't even have a dusty citation for jaywalking on him.”

May shook her head, amused and disbelieving. “Must be real nice around here.”

“We try, ma'am. It's a good neighborhood.”

The cop shifted his weight. May glanced up at him. “All of it?” she asked him. Beat cops knew more, and this one was not only pure beat, he knew what went on in the areas the detectives didn't see as much.

“'Bout as good as you get in the Carolinas, ma'am,” he said, catching the real question with a glimmer of understanding in his eyes. “But Phelps was about as genuine as you could ask for. Treated everyone fine.”

That was the answer she wanted. Okay, no Phelps. No need to rattle that guy's day. She looked up and marked the guy's badge again. Tomlinson. She picked up a pen. “First name, Officer Tomlinson?”

“Darnell.”

“Alright.” She jotted that down and then looked to Broward. “I'll do what I can to keep your office in the loop, but as you know we're multi-state on this. While we're here, I'm gonna commandeer Officer Tomlinson as our intermediary. Free you up to deal with what you can. That okay?”

Another rustle from behind her. The detective clearly thought he was going to get that nice mark on his yearly report. He'd added absolutely jack in comparison to the street cop, and May wasn't going to play politics. Broward nodded, earning him another point on May's private scorecard. “Just fine with me. You need help around the neighborhood, Tomlinson's one of the best guides I could give you anyway.”

“Perfect.” May turned at the knock at the office door, watching as her backup filled the entrance. “You got something fresh?”

Simmons nodded, a slim medical file clutched in her hands. “I think we do.”


	4. That Tall Glass of Milk

“In addition to the damage we found throughout the victim's system, I'd like to note that L- Lucas first noticed the other thing that might be of some merit.” Simmons tapped at the neatly handwritten overview, shooting a glance at the officer accompanying May. “Mr. Stutgart's got residue under his nails, a slight odor besides.” She glanced expectantly up at the new agent, cueing him to add his observation.

“Grease and ash,” said 'Lucas,' wrinkling his nose slightly to indicate how he'd found that clue. “Not a common thing for a teacher's hands.”

“Could likely be the old incinerator up at the school. Janitor's basement.” Tomlinson shrugged as he drew looks. “I went to that school myself when I was a kid. Newberry Elemental gets 'em from all the neighborhoods. They cut their garbage costs by still using the thing. They put a lot of paper waste in, although some teachers don't like to use it. Stutgart was kinda old fashioned, though. Anyway, routine, you know? Clean up before you go home.”

“Hmm. So perhaps not immediately important,” said Simmons, frowning in thought.

The cop shrugged again, leaning against his patrol car and looking up at the sunshine. “Maybe, maybe not. Trash day is Saturday. Mostly nobody incinerates on Friday. Too much other stuff built up by then. So folks usually just bag it all up.”

May studied Tomlinson. “So going down to the basement wouldn't be typical on the vic's last day.”

“I wouldn't say so, ma'am, but I don't know.”

She gave him one of her rare smiles. “You  _do_ know. Credit to your job, Officer.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

May snapped the file shut and tucked it under her arm, putting on a slim pair of shades. “One more question for you before we leave it there for a couple hours – anyplace decent for lunch around here?”

“You want something familiar and safe or you looking for real food?”

The tall guy's green eyes rolled towards Tomlinson in something like desperation. “Real food,  _please_ .”

That drew a chuckle from the cop as he pointed up the road out of the station's parking lot. “Go up two lights, take a left, look for the run-down place on the right side that obviously used to be a Pizza Hut. Looks like Chinese? They sell that for the takeout crowd, sure, but everybody that runs the place is Korean. Go off their page. The bibimbap is top-freaking-notch.” He air-kissed his fingers and let it go for emphasis. “They sell that till two in the morning, seven a week, God bless their hearts.”

“I'm sold,” said May. “You want to join us?”

The cop looked genuinely flattered. “Thanks, and I would, but I got a routine. Need to get my patrol up through the northside to check on some of the old folks. They get used to it, you know.”

“Raincheck you on that, then.” May gestured at him with the file. “Thanks for being here, Officer. I'll give you a call if we need a guide around the neighborhood.”

. . .

Simmons watched Loki gingerly pick through and around the warm bowl of rice and veggies, his eyes never leaving the huge dollop of hot sauce he was working with. She slurped some spicy ramyeon noodles as he took another bite, his expression odd. She licked some broth off her lips. “Well, how is it?”

“A thousand years of mostly roasted meats and mead behind me and only a few experiences with your cultures thus far, so this is yet a little different.” He took another forkful of the now-mixed bibimbap, then dabbed at his mouth to cover up the sweating. “I think I approve, though.” He sighed. “You'd expect on the long view there'd be some variations on a world's diet just to change it up, but no, you simply don't realize the rut until you're separated from it.” He glanced up to catch her grinning at him. “So, fine, you humans can take culinary variety as another mark in your ledger.”

“Volume,” said May, watching the lunch crowd.

“No one cares,” muttered Loki, going for bravery and folding in more of the hot paste.

“Volume it down anyway.” She caught Simmons looking at her and shrugged. “No, I don't think the officer cared you nearly blurted the wrong name.”

“Wasn't thinking. I still apologize.”

“Let it go. You both did great in the morgue.” She tapped the file. “Any thoughts on the device he had inside him, anything we've seen before?” Only a shake of Simmons' head answered her while Loki kept focused on his rice. “Okay. That's possibly the major lead. We'll follow that up more thoroughly when we get to the other two, see if we can piece that mystery together. First, we're going to do a little footwork.”

“Assess the residence, the workplace, and the closest thing we have to witnesses?” Loki finished his question with a soft cough into his fist and a clear of his throat. He was turning lightly red from too much spice and there were a few tiny drops of sweat on his forehead. Simmons put a hand up to her face to hide her amusement. He flickered a dour look at her anyway, which only made her snort harder.

“Just like the training manual says.” If May was amused, she didn't show it on her face. Instead she sighed. “Means we're gonna want to talk to the kid.”

Simmons leaned over to double-check the notes. “Aimee Rodgers?”

“That's her. Cops said she was one of his top students, took the news hard. Maybe she saw him acting weird, I don't know.” She grimaced, drawing Loki's attention. Grudgingly and choosing to stab at the food on her own plate instead of looking up, she muttered an explanation. “I'm not great with kids. I scare 'em.” She glanced at Simmons, who flapped a hand indicating that she didn't feel she was much better with them.

Loki gave a long-suffering sigh and tugged at the file to look at the blurry copy of a yearbook photo. He studied the face of the grinning young girl and her tumble of tied up box braids, the memory of some happier day. “I have no trouble nor quarrel with the little ones. I'll talk to her if you like.”

May lifted both her eyebrows at him, toying with the straw in her waterglass. “I'd expect you to scare an eight year old worse than I could ever dream of doing.”

Loki gave her a long, cool look. “The small children of many races are used to monsters living under their beds and nightmares rattling their minds every night. Sometimes they're more willing to befriend  _them_ than what walks in the day. They're hardier than usually expected. They tire me, but they don't bother me.”

“Be my guest,” May shrugged. What the hell. Phil said to throw the new guy at whatever she needed. It spared her an awkward hour. “We'll toss the school first once class lets out, take a look at the incinerator and snap some shots of the classroom. I'll get you shipped out to the kid tonight once we clear some permissions.” She looked down at the file. “Currently living with her grandma to keep her steady in one school. Parents are out of state for work. I'll get Skye to process any legal hurdles for us.”

“And Stutgart's home?” Simmons put her spoon down into the last dregs of the broth, clasping her hands together atop the table. “We'll do that tomorrow?”

“That's the current outline. Anyone got anything to add?”

Loki coughed again, his rice gone. “What do you do to get the heat out of your mouth after such meals?” He picked up the napkin to dab gracefully at his forehead.

Now May smirked at his distress. “Glass of milk helps.”

The ersatz Asgardian rolled his eyes. “In public? Forget it, I'll suffer.”

“Cultural thing?”

“Very.” He looked over to see her still smirking at him. “ _Volume,_ ” he drawled, annoyed at being the comedy show of the hour. He stood up and took his suit jacket off the back of the chair, shrugging it on smoothly, still giving her a baleful look.

“Suck it up, new guy.”

With one more mutter under his breath, he did.

. . .

Simmons gently lifted the pile of books from the corner of Stutgart's desk at the front of the empty classroom, unable to resist dragging out the not-particularly-serious argument. “I mean, it's a perfectly nutritious liquid. I can only assume its benefits are quite cross-cultural. Universal, perhaps?”

“It's  _presentation._ If you're an adult, you simply do not choose milk over literally  _anything else_ available in the tavern or some fatwit's going to decide you're a good choice to pick his next fight with.” Loki set down the stack of papers he'd just finished going through and moved to the next. “I do not allow others to choose the hour and the setting of a fight with me.  _I_ decide when the battle happens.”

“No one is going to pick a fight with you here on Earth over ordering a glass of milk,” she said, laughing lightly.

He pointed at her. “Then why was it once such a strident plot point that there was one friend who chooses  _water_ while all his companions drink beer?”

“The-” She stared at him. “Wait. The movie about all the pubs and the end of the world?”

“ _That_ one. Gave him a hell of a time for it.” He arched an eyebrow expectantly.

She sorted the pile of books in her hands quickly, still laughing. “No, we're not going to discuss the fictional theme of a film. I'm going to ask when the heck you're watching British comedies.”

“Entirely not the point.”

“It is now.” She pointed at his stack of ungraded papers. “Nothing there?”

“No. We expected to find nothing and so it is. You're going to stand there and tell me no one on Earth has gotten their arse kicked for drinking something outside of local social norms?” He slapped down the latest pile, the sound of it drawing May's attention from outside in the hallway. She was questioning other teachers, but took the time to shoot him a hot look of warning. He picked up the next pile more softly, sighing.

Simmons put her hands up in surrender, shaking her head. “I suppose I can't tell you that. Is this really what you're doing with your time when the Director puts you on the night watch schedule? Watching films in the rec? My goodness, I thought what Skye said was going to be a one-off.”

The answer was a long time coming, and grudging at that. “Sometimes.”

“Oh, my  _God._ ” She giggled. “We are a terrible influence on the galaxy. I've seen our film collection. Stick with the books.”

“I can only take so many hoary tomes on your social and cultural trivia before needing some other distraction.”

“Well, to be frank, you're not typically expected to cram all our study materials in just a few months. Even if you can. Right solid treatment for insomnia that way, however.” She arched an eyebrow as his expression changed. “What?”

He shook his head, brows furrowed. “Odd lesson plans here. He did not underestimate his charges. In fact, he shot quite high as I think I understand it.” He lifted up a couple books to show her. “ _Russia of the Tsars?_ Books of their short tales? Pushkin?” He sorted a few others then looked back up at her. “Quite the spread. Very globally-minded. Aren't American schools supposedly very Western-centric?”

“There's always exceptions. Stutgart was one of those, perhaps.”

“Aiming to be the teacher of legend.” Loki set the books down, now watching May come into the classroom. His gaze made Simmons turn around to look.

May jutted a thumb over her shoulder. “Other teachers got nothing. He was a great guy. Personal, kept to himself, always changed out the coffee pot in the lounge to freshen it. No friends, but no enemies either.”

“A perfect cipher.”

She nodded to Loki at the laconic summary. “I also ran down to the basement and bagged a swipe off the incinerator. Simmons, you should still do a chem compare to lock it in, but I'm calling it – that's definitely where the victim picked up your grease and ash traces.” She jerked her chin towards the desk. “Any clue what he might have torched?”

Simmons shook her head. “Lesson plans, school notices, lots of spare paper and pencils. He left his personal life at home.”

“Starting to think we might not see a whole lot of that there, either.” May crossed her arms, the corner of her lip gone crooked in thought.

“And what of tonight's festivities?”

May came out of her thoughts to regard Loki. “I got an email from base just before I came in, yeah. We're clear to talk to the kid. Tomlinson's on his way here to meet us; he'll guide us up to the neighborhood. I'll handle Grandma while you see if the kid's got anything.” Her tone said she didn't have much in the way of expectations.

Loki pushed the stack of books back into a neat pile, his voice lightly amused. “Won't this be fun?”

She studied him, thinking over the worst case scenario – crying, terrified kids and cars on fire. “I'm gonna ask him where a decent bar is afterward,” she said, not wild about the soft chuckle that followed her words.


	5. Teachable Moments

Loki glanced at the narrow window set in the front of the small slat-sided house. In the shadows beyond its blue frame, he could see the slim profile of the child's grandmother as she fretted at Agent May by her side. He could imagine the shape of their conversation clearly; the elder woman's discomfort with the stranger outside with her grandchild, and May's undoubtedly conflicted need to be on his side in this matter. He looked away. There was nothing he could do for them, so he watched over the child instead.

Aimee seemed far less worried about the pale man in a black suit than her grandmother, fussing instead with a thick book of crossword puzzles that she laid on the front lawn's plastic table. She wanted to finish the puzzle she was on, she told him. It was very important to her. A child's firm proclamation; not one to be disobeyed. So he accepted that with a nod and took in a view of the neighborhood instead while he waited for her to be done.

Green yards edged with chained fences, dogs barking their mild annoyance with each other now and again. Up the street, Officer Tomlinson leaned against his patrol car and talked with another neighbor. Simmons was at his side, listening in. The officer saw nothing unusual, nothing to remark about the choice of agent set to the child's side, which amused Loki deeply. For all his bleak reputation, today he was a nobody in a quiet urban neighborhood.

“What's another word for not being scared?” Aimee didn't look up at him. The pencil wiggled in her hand as she thought, her mouth twisting with the effort.

Loki resettled on the wide, flat rock that had no doubt seen a few summertime tea parties with Grandma. His hand rustled in his pocket, pulling out a silver coin and toying it through his fingers. “There are quite a few. How many letters do you need? Have you any clues?”

“Eight letters.” She poked at the tiny boxes with a soft brown finger. “There's a P and an I.”

Simple enough. “ _Intrepid.”_

He watched her fill the rest of the letters in. Then she shut the book and pulled it close to her, her round face closing in on itself for a moment. When her dark eyes opened, a child's quick tears were threatening at the corners. “Mr. Stutgart gave me this last month. He said it would help me learn new words.”

“And so you do.” Loki said, thinking he understood now the importance in finishing the puzzle. Having her cry too quickly would draw a grandmother's frantic worry, so he rambled lightly for a moment to snare her attention back to him. “Intrepid. Fearless, if you will. A bit of a chancy word, a bit robust for most circumstances.  _Unafraid_ works just as well mostly, as does  _bold_ . But I suppose it's all about the tone of the statement you're trying to make.”

She peered up at his accented cadence, eyes wide and blunt in their assessment. “Are you really a cop?”

He arched a single eyebrow at her, far higher than he usually might.

A tiny smile peeked at his stretchy expression. “You don't look like one.”

“And what does a cop look like?”

Aimee's eyes flickered up to Tomlinson. “With the uniform. Sometimes in suits, but not like yours. They go into houses after the uniform ones go in sometimes. They all really keep to themselves. They don't talk to kids.”

“Not much evidence to bolster your case here.”

“You don't  _ sound  _ like a cop.” She clutched the crossword book closer to her, her drying eyes accusing him from under a cascading knot of thin braids and pink plastic bows.

Loki inclined his head politely, smiling, the coin still playing around his fingers and catching her gaze. “Well, regardless of how I seem, I  _ am  _ trying to help find who hurt your teacher. I promise you that.” She leaned forward when the evening-orange sun set the coin to flickering brightly and he held it still for her to look at. Curious, she lifted a hand and then drew it back.

He pinched it between two fingers and offered it to her to examine. “It's quite old,” he said as she took it carefully, her dark brown child-sized fingers in contrast to his. The face on the coin was worn almost smooth, the image of a noble Asgardian profile no human would be able to identify. On the other were the old runes. A token from another age, the first great era of All-Father Odin. “Older than me by no small measure.”

“Who is he?” A tiny fingernail painted with pink and green sparkles traced the faded face.

“Oh, just some king.” She gave him the coin back. “It doesn't matter. Just a little trinket I keep around.” He flipped it into the air and caught it deftly, drawing a smile from her. Then he started dancing it back and forth between his hands.

The smile grew, then faded into a child's deadly seriousness. “Are you going to try to hypnotize me with it?”

Loki reared back, mock-astonished. “You watch far too much television. Absolutely not. It would be inconsiderate.” He set the coin to dancing again, thin evening light flashing along its edges. “All I will do is give you something to watch while we talk. Something to keep your eyes and mind busy.”

“Why?”

He smiled again. Children held no filters in his experience, they drove in for the kill. There would be little point in being anything other than honest right now. “Because sometimes we want  _ so badly  _ to help when things go wrong that we might push our thoughts too hard. Memory is a tricky thing; it's a liquid and not a solid. So when the questions aren't asked right and the stakes are high, why, it's very simple to create a perfectly believable and completely incorrect answer. The witness describes a man in a dark coat at a crime scene. But perhaps it was brown? Or green? What answer might best please the questioner? What makes them feel like it helps the most?”

Aimee studied him, her lip pulling in for a worried nibble.

“Even more, it's quite easy to make someone create a story you could use instead of the truth. Quite easy indeed. Most living people have very flexible minds. All you must do is push just a titch.” The coin balanced on the nail of his thumb and then seemed to flip itself. No magic, just a single deft gesture so quick it was invisible. “But the truth is what will help here and so we'll only look for that. Watch the coin, Miss Rodgers. Don't think overmuch, just talk with me. You may have seen more than you realize, but your eager mind will get in the way if you let it.”

 . . .

May stood at the window and studied Loki as he flipped the coin about in an intricate little dance. Was it all sleight of hand or was he using a little real magic now, too? Probably didn't matter. The kid looked fine, if tired around the eyes in the unmistakeable sign of someone doing a lot of crying. May knew what some of Loki's less-ethical stunts could look like and nothing he was doing was setting off her warning instincts. Aimee laughed at a few of the tricks, having no clue who her visitor really was. Grudgingly, May had to give him this one – he seemed way better with kids than his rep gave him any right to be. The last time she'd tried a sit-down with a kid under sixteen, the boy had been already hicking up hot tears by this point.

None of this showed on her face. Instead, she gave Mrs. Rodgers her best comforting smile. “We're out here with some of our best. If you want, please call the number I gave you. They'll reassure you that everything's all right.”

Mrs. Rodgers tugged at the scarf wrapped around her neatly-tied hair, only a few tight ringlets permitted to escape near her temple. “I only agreed because of how upset she's been. She looks fine right now, but she took that news so very hard. Stutgart was a good man. Hasn't slept hardly a wink since, got to keep that book of hers close by. If she thinks she can help...” Her voice trailed off.

“I guarantee she's helping. Any little detail is incredibly valuable at this stage.”

“And that man? He a child psychologist or something?”

May's long practice at self control kept the sharp inhale of laughter at bay. “Just one of our specialists, ma'am.”

. . .

“We were going to read about old Russia. Homework was a big chapter about one of their kings.” Aimee tapped at the comparatively huge hand she thought for sure held the coin and found the palm empty.

“The tsars?”

She nodded, then checked his other palm. Still no coin. She frowned at him, tugging at his fingers for an answer. “No fair. First hand?”

His first hand flexed a thumb, and the coin reappeared from where he'd hid it just out of sight. She clapped. “Which tsar?”

“Ivan. Ivan va-see-lee-ev-ich.” She sounded it out carefully just the way she'd been taught, frowning. “The boys were happy. He sounded gross and mean.”

“Well, sometimes the truth of history is distressing.” The coin snapped through the air. “Does few favors to pretend otherwise.”

“You're weird, too.” The coin arced over her head and she caught it with both hands before tossing it back to Loki, who only smiled.

“And so the bell was about to ring. And that was your day?” He set the coin on the stone and let it roll along its thin edge, catching it before it fell into the grass.

Aimee nodded. “He did his little bow and he looked at his desk again and the bell rang. I told him goodbye and I had to run to get my bus. It's all the way down at the end of the line and I've missed it before. Gamma got mad, but not at me. It's hard for her to get all the way to the school. It's really far.”

_ Again.  _ The coin paused in another roll, his instincts prickling as he caught something in the tone of her voice – the single word drawn out and emphasized.  _ Again, sheesh, agaaain _ . The coin started moving again. “Again? What was he looking at on his desk?”

Aimee furrowed her brow, clearly thinking hard before she looked at him, startled with herself. “I'm thinking too hard!”

“It's fine, Aimee. Just relax and talk.”

“He looked at his desk a  _ lot  _ on Friday.” Her brows knotted tighter. “Like it bothered him.”

“Now be careful.” She reached out for the coin and tried to flip it herself. It dropped into the grass by her knee and she picked it up, playing with the outlines of the old pre-futhark runes. “Why do you remember that, you think? There's likely a reason if you can stumble into it, but don't feel you need to force it.”

She looked up at him after a moment of play, eyes widening and short dark fingers firmly pinched around the coin. “I forgot! I went up to his desk before lunch. And there was an envelope on it. I noticed it because it wasn't from the school.”

He kept his expression calm, doing his part to try and keep the memory neutral. “Do you remember anything about the envelope? Why was it not from the school?”

“Because it didn't have anything on it. They stamp all their stuff with this yucky blue ink! And the paper was weird.” She looked up at the sky. “Thick. Rough looking. Like stuff we use in art. He put it down in the morning and didn't touch it again. Because we put all our papers in a pile next to it and he kept fussing with the pile. Made sure it didn't slop over.”

_ A heavy canvas envelope from an unknown sender. That's what he burned.  _ He smiled, calm and easy and thinking ahead.  _ Did the other victims have such an envelope? And did they destroy theirs? _

And then his next thought, once alien to him in its nature –  _ The others might well find this useful.  _ His expression changed slightly as he realized that, drawing a worried glance from the girl. “Is that good?”

“Aimee, that is remarkably helpful.” He took the coin back from her, bowing his head politely.

“You looked startled.”

“Something else occurred to me. A personal matter. No need to trouble yourself.”

“You looked sad.”

“You said  _ startled  _ first _. _ ” He put the coin away in his pocket.

“People can be both,” she said with a child's clarity, then reached out to tug at the sleeve of his suit jacket. “It's okay to be sad, isn't it?”

“Whether you lose or find something important to you, very much so.”

Aimee swallowed hard, the tears threatening again. “He liked to talk about all the chances we could have. He liked talking about hope. He never made us feel bad for things we couldn't change.” The leaking started despite her efforts to hold it back. “I miss him.”

“You will for some time.” He tilted his head, considering her. “Thank you for talking with me, Aimee. Now come. Let's get your grandmother so you can have a treat and a good cry. It won't fix what hurts, but there's never a poor moment for a sweet.”

She nodded, and took his hand when he stood up. With some effort, he managed to not show his surprise.

. . .

Groquist looked up at the three men waiting for him in the lobby of the county morgue, immediately comfortable with their style – three boring looking men in suits of varying shades of grey. “Came down soon as you called, gentlemen. Can we help you?”

One of them stepped forward to flash a familiar-style badge, his voice lazily annoyed and local. “Yeah, we've got a call on our desk about some out of towners pretending to be our jurisdiction. Didn't your chief check with our Columbia office before lettin' 'em in?”

“Told us all they were vetted clean.” Groquist set his jaw, feeling the vindication about the 'Quantico' kids warm his heart. God damn Chief Broward. The young little prick was always on his ass for some PC horseshit or another. Well, he was just gonna love having  _ this _ blow up in his face.

“Yeah, well, they weren't clean. Now I guess we gotta take care of the mess.” The agent heaved a sigh, reaching out to clap the ME on his shoulder like an old friend. “Can we get a look at the stiff? I want to know if these jerks screwed anything up before we go round them up.”

“Absolutely, sir.” Groquist reached into the lobby desk to get the keys to the morgue. “I'll walk you through myself.”

“Great. Glad we got someone here I know we can trust. Old-timers. You know how it's done.” Another clap. “I'll hope you've got our back when we throw down on the chief. This is some serious incompetence.”

“Ain't it ever.” Groquist grinned. The revenge of the dinosaur was gonna come around at last. “Happy to help the proper authorities.”


	6. Fridged Logic

“You're the designated kid-wrangler for the foreseeable future.” May glanced in the rear-view mirror to see the demigod where he lay half-flopped along the wide back seat, knees up and a hand rubbing hard at his forehead.

“Joy.”

Simmons giggled at his subdued weariness in the passenger seat as she looked down at her tablet. “You did marvelously. I agree, that envelope she described is what Stutgart burned. But if the other victims don't have one to examine, I don't know what to do with that information. Still, it's something we can cling to.”

“Got it in the system?” May watched Simmons nod, taking one hand off the wheel to fish out her phone when it jingled a priority call. She pulled up to a red light before checking the name on the screen. “Officer Tomlinson,” she said, then activated it. “Agent May.”

_ “We got trouble.” _

“Hold on.” May instinctively glanced at her team first to assess their safety, following it up with a full visual sweep of her surroundings. Nothing caught her eye. She jerked the SUV through the red light, getting Simmons' startled attention and not caring. Once out of sight of the main thoroughfare, she pulled into an alley and let the vehicle idle. “You've got my attention, Tomlinson. What's going on?”

_ “Three suits came into the station and cozied up to our jerkass medical examiner. Say you folks ain't who you say you are.”  _ The questions were clear in his voice.  _ “Wondering if that part might not be a little true, but not my whole concern here.” _

“Officer, I will tell you this much – your victim is absolutely our jurisdiction and we want to do all we can to find out what happened to him and why. That's my sworn word on the topic.” Jemma's eyes were huge as May talked.

_ “CIA? Naw, forget it.”  _ A rustle came from the other end of the line. She could tell he was in civvies by the scratch of denim.  _ “They're back down in the morgue again but probably won't be there long. I'm wondering if they're gonna walk with the body. Chief's delaying them best he can, paperwork and other bull, but he's staying in his office and out of the scene directly for a few.” _

May glanced up and saw that Loki was upright and fully focused as well. It occurred to her to wonder if his hearing was good enough to pick up both ends of the conversation. Aliens. Well, the job was always different. “I'm appreciating the dime-drop, Officer, but kind of surprised to get it, considering. What caught your eye?”

_ “These guys made a big stink in the Chief's office about not verifying you through the Columbia bureau. So I wandered out and made a call to a friend of a friend because something about that sounded off to me. Just got the word back. They're not from there, either.” _

The hand that was still on the SUV's wheel tightened until the plasticky leather squeaked. This could mean a simple investigation was about to get dangerously complex. She thought fast. “I'm going to ask a favor and you are fully within your rights to decline, Darnell. What I need could get you fired when what  _ should  _ happen is we get the hell out of your life and you make Detective someday.”

_ “I like the street. Broward's got my back, ma'am. He knows I'm calling. New guard lining up against the old, story of the South.” _

She told him where to meet her and rang off, looking at her two agents in turn. “I'm getting to the meet on foot,” she told them. “You guys are bugging out. Forget Stutgart's place for now, neither lead we've got goes back there. It's a three hour trip from here to the prior victim.”

“Nurse Kistler, the practitioner.”

May nodded to her. “Simmons, you're driving. Loki, cover tracks.” She tapped on the roof of the car.

She saw him blink once, slowly. “Done. I hope everyone likes old grey Chevys. Should be anonymous enough, I think.”

“Perfect.” She nodded to Jemma. “Be careful. We don't know if these mystery guys got to the other victims before they caught up here. Toss Kistler's house first and see if this envelope thing bears out. If it exists, maybe it got missed. Then get into the morgue and do a verification on what you found here, if possible. It may not be.” She turned to look at Loki. “That's your job; cover infiltration and watch for complications. Work fast. Keep yourselves safe. Do not engage in a fight. If you think you're even close to getting cornered, retreat back to base.”

He smiled, one of those grim and predatory ones. “Conflict will be well avoidable.”

May actually didn't doubt that, but it was her job to consider the worst case scenario no matter what. She popped her seatbelt and got ready to slide out. “Hope so. I'll be in touch.”

Simmons scooted over into the driver's seat as May moved. “Good luck.” She looked over her shoulder. “Want the passenger's? It'd be a help to have you set the GPS while I get us moving.”

 . . .

Tomlinson's personal car was a deep blue Corolla and to his credit, he didn't even blink when May opened the door and slid into the seat next to him. “I still owe you a raincheck on that Korean food. Which was excellent, by the way, and gave me a story to tell people about one of our new agents. We're pretty much up to a fancy buffet night with this.”

The cop put the car into drive, peering up the street to make sure nobody saw the new arrival. “Don't think you'll stick in town long enough to pay up on that.”

“I got ways.” She jerked her chin towards him. “I want a look at these guys, see what their deal is. And I want to see what  _ they  _ are trying to pull with the body. Either goal first.”

“Circle back around on your trackers and sniff 'em out. That's some pro thinking. Now I  _ am  _ curious who the hell all y'all are.” Tomlinson changed streets, easily finding the back way towards the station.

She arched an eyebrow at him, amused. “Curious enough to wind up in a federal prison for knowing too much?”

The cop snorted. “Let's see how this gig at the station plays out first, then I might just wanna risk it.” He put his police scanner on, checking for anything in the static of an empty band. “Still quiet. They're out of the office at the moment. We work fast, you'll get a look at what they did to Stutgart before they come back.”

“Where'd they go?” she asked, guessing the answer.

He confirmed it. “Tossing the motel you guys used. You leave anything?”

She smirked at him. “What do you think?”

Tomlinson laughed. “See, this is why I stay on the street. It's way more interesting and the coffee is better.”

. . .

Simmons glanced at the GPS, marking the next freeway exit she needed to use. “Kistler's home was in an apartment complex, looks like. Multiple floors, multiple doors. Sort of place where there's goings on all day and night. Does that complicate getting an entry?”

Her answer was a low and derisive chuckle. “With me handling infiltration? Not hardly. Worst case, I _ highly  _ doubt there's a sorcerer living in such a tenement that's capable of sniffing a few moments of invisibility. What's likelier is we'll simply walk right in.” He frowned down at the tablet's notes, considering.

“If someone's there, can you draw them off without incident?” She felt a little relief at his nod. “Right, then.” She tapped her thumbs on the wheel. “So we've found ourselves in the middle of something, looks like.”

He glanced at her. “I hadn't made an assumption yet either way. You feel more certainly these interlopers were not the source of Stutgart's demise?”

“It's  _ possible,  _ of course, but you must admit it's impractical to reclaim some ownership of the body if they were the ones to previously search it.”

“Well, yes, but what if they wanted to be sure nothing was discovered? Ordinary police find the corpse, what of it? They found nothing for they looked for nothing. Specialized eyes, now we're a threat to be identified. A long-view ploy.”

“Such a risk, though. If they didn't want to chance anyone seeing anything, why leave the body to be found at all?”

“To see who comes to the bait and then hunt them for some particular purpose.”

“My God, but you're an untrusting and pessimistic fellow.” She gave a weak laugh.

“It's gotten me this far, alive.” He settled back against the passenger's seat, tapping the notes against the dash. “Your assumption is likelier, yes. If for no other reason than I note that things  _ always  _ seem to grow more complicated around this lot.” He shook his head. “So, let's think through yours. One faction murders our three, and now another's come to muck up the trail. To what purpose? What value?” He looked out the window to watch the green freeway signs pass by in a flash. “Did we effect this interference, or would they have come to the body regardless?”

“We'll have an answer to that perhaps at Kistler's.” The freeway changed with a bump under the tires. In the distance, a gas station winked its lights against the night. “Ugh. I'm dying for a bottle of something to drink and I'm not May. We'll pull over a second.”

“You're fine to do so, I think. Nothing's so much as shown an interest in us, except for that one obnoxious man that screamed at us to wash our vehicle.”

“You overdid it a little on the dinginess,” she said, laughing at his offhanded shrug.

. . .

The medical examiner was dead, shoved into the still-open cube that once held Stutgart. May pushed at the shoulder with a gloved hand to see the results of some final blow, frowning. “Quick and clean. Professional job.” She looked back at Broward while Tomlinson kept watch in the doorway. “Better than feds can do,” she said, lifting an eyebrow to underline her subtle, grim joke.

Broward shook his head, snapping new photographs of Stutgart where he lay on the examination table. “I hated him, but Jesus. Never wished for this.”

“Never?” Tomlinson turned to look at his boss.

“The occasional nasty daydreams of a life without Groquist don't count, Officer.” The chief gave him a wry grin, no real mirth in it. He turned back to May. “When you say professional, what exactly do you mean, ma'am?”

“Trained operator, either hired or government. Honestly, if it were government, I probably would have gotten a heads up before someone shoved your guy in the freezer.” May let the fresh corpse go. “Moved in fast, got what they needed, cleared out the biggest piece of evidence that they were ever here.” She pulled away after that, glancing down at Stutgart. “You guys got a safehouse?”

“I got a place,” said Tomlinson. Broward looked at him. “You remember, Chief. I mentioned it once after the Wiesner crash last year and we got drunk as skunks together. I never told anyone else here about it. No paper trail.”

May nodded in approval. “Good. My instincts says your trio is still going to come back one more time to wipe you up when they're done sniffing our tracks. I'm gonna make a call when I'm done here, get some people out to keep an eye on the both of you. You've been a huge help, the kind we don't get every day. I want to see you come out the other side of this.”

“You're SHIELD,” said Broward, convinced. That earned him a sharp glance and he tried to ease it off with a little smile. “Must be some crap we're in here. I wondered. I have a brother in New York, Agent May. He was working just up the street from Stark Tower that day the invasion happened. He still does. Told me he got to see Captain America live and for real. Not everyone forgot that part after the mess you guys got into later.” He gestured at Stutgart, changing the topic. “Took the pics I could. You want me to look closer for you, I can. I just gotta go barf first. Looks like they cut out a chunk of his lower spine.”

May moved to the table to look for herself, marking the new, roughly carved gap in the corpse. Something about that struck a jangling alert in the back of her mind, one she tagged and identified instantly. That was another phone call she was going to have to make when she got a chance. “More evidence torn out.” She shook her head. “The pictures you've got will be fine.” She stuck her hand out to take the camera from the police chief, pulling out her phone to jerry-rig it for an upload.

When it was done, she set the camera back down on the counter and then went still, lifting one hand to silence the muttering pair of cops. Instinctively, they obeyed her. Then they heard what she did – the soft, distant footsteps of new arrivals on the floor. May looked up at Tomlinson, her voice whispering in command. “Back way out. Fast.”

. . .

“Never been so glad to forget about fixing the emergency system,” Broward muttered from where he was hunched behind the thick hedge bordering the station's parking lot. “We'd still be runnin' if the door popped its alarm.”

“You might yet have to, if we get too noisy over here.” said May. They both took her hint and stilled. Her pocket binoculars were in her hands and she focused in on the back door when she caught movement. Her phone vibrated softly in her jacket, a specific pattern to let her know what backup Phil could muster was on its way for the two cops. “Stay down and quiet.” Following her own advice, she slid further into the cover of the bushes, hoping like hell they weren't rolling with heat sensitive devices.

Cagey bastards. The one at the back entrance stuck his head out with deliberate care, just in case whoever they thought might be out there had a bead drawn on him. The thought crossed May's mind before being tossed aside in favor of observance and possible capture and interrogation, if she felt it was necessary.

She watched the tall, studiously generic looking man in the grey suit come out further to survey the terrain around the police station, hands holding a firearm in the low and ready position. He never left partial cover, and beyond the obvious mercenary professionalism, she couldn't read anything else off him at this distance. She swiveled over to check out the other two, coming out of the front hot and angry.

Her own lips pursed, she tried to piece together what she could from reading their lips.

“ _ -wasn't the plan. They're in the wind. You call the boss, tell him-”  _ Head One turned his head away.

_ “You call him.”  _ Head Two shrugged, getting angrier.  _ “We went by the playbook on this. Nobody expected the third party.” _

Head One swiveled back.  _ “You get a ring back from Kistler's chopshop?” _

_“Still out there. They got what they-”_

May swore under her breath as the second head turned. Then they went back inside. “They've ripped up at least one other victim, snapped our trail. I'm going to assume they've done both.”

Tomlinson turned towards her. “Everything else okay?”

She gritted her teeth. “I need to make a couple calls once I've got you two clear. Then I'm just gonna have to hope the new guy can smell a threat as good as he used to before we hired him.”

“The suit? He ex-merc himself?”

She exhaled a sharp breath through her nose by way of a laugh. “Not exactly. Come on. Let's get downtown and shelter you up.”


	7. Mail Call

Loki let the curtain go with aching slowness, settling it back into place with a single finger. He could still see the two bulky shapes down on the lawn of the apartment complex. He could tell both were studying the game he rigged for them. “That'll keep this pair busy a while yet. I think there might be several others elsewhere in proximity, however.” There were a few more cars arriving around the fringes of the building, but he couldn't be sure of the purpose of their occupants. Still, he looked for ways to keep the route between the door of the building and their vehicle clear of their hunters. If he had a little fun doing it, all the better.

He could hear Simmons rustling through the piles of stacked mail by the television behind him. “What did you do?”

“There's a tall man in a dark navy suit on the other side of the parking lot, and he looks almost – but not quite – entirely unlike me. He'll examine the building for a while, and then he will pace off with firm purpose down a narrow side street, the hallmark of a fumblingly obvious intelligence agent. Purely bait. The two below by the door are fixated already, and will likely follow him to try and beat information out of him. They cannot know it's only a ghost and it will evade them. It should be quite frustrating.” He turned to smile at Simmons, an amused jackal's grin. “I _like_ this part of the job.”

“You would.” She rushed her gloved hands through the tossed papers, trying not to think about the people that might already be inside the complex looking for them. “Nothing here. I'll start the next room. You don't think any of them will come up to the room to search?”

“Might do, but they won't find us.” Loki decided against telling her that if _he_ was so inclined to be sure a location was safe from an enemy's search for hints, he would have simply destroyed the entire floor with them in it. Pointless to alarm her. The scenario was unlikely here. These interferers seemed insistent on being relatively subtle for humans. Still, he crossed the room to check out the hall again. He could hear the creaks of other humans in their homes, doing whatever they did in the dead of night.

A moment later - “Loki?” Her voice was hushed but urgent, catching his attention. “Back here, please.”

He shut the door with a careful pull, silencing the click of its locks with a wave of his hand and keeping his pace almost as quiet as he passed through the doorway into a tiny bedroom.

Simmons looked up at him from the far side, well away from the window. The room was fastidiously neat, the open closet revealing a set of variously colored scrubs and sweaters and boxes full of medical texts. He scanned all this quickly before he saw her raise her latex-gloved hand, the thick envelope pinched carefully between her fingers. “You think?” she asked him, still hushed but hopeful.

He dug in his pocket for the set of gloves she'd pressed on him and tugged them on, reaching out to take it from her. His eyes narrowed at the weight of it. Naturally plain, rough paper, passingly like a child's canvas for crayon art. The front of it was unmarked, no address, only the dents of the dead nurse's fingernails near the edge. Flipping it over revealed that it was unsealed, slit carefully open along the gummy flap. “Yes, I do. Did you look inside?”

Simmons shook her head, tugging into her jacket pocket for a plastic evidence bag. “If given an option, I'd prefer to in a controlled state. Don't know what might be contained. What if it's not merely a letter?”

He arched an eyebrow in agreement, no stranger to valuable paranoia himself. When she had the bag ready, he passed the envelope back to her to be sealed tight inside. Then he put his hand on his pocket, feeling it buzz sharply in a particular cadence. They'd taught him that was a priority notice, one to be examined as quickly as possible. From the look on Simmons' face, she'd just received the same thing.

While she secured the envelope inside her coat, he tugged out his phone to see what the matter was. The first thing he saw were the uploaded photographs from the late Mr. Stutgart. He studied the rugged cuts along the spine. “Well, that's unpleasant.”

Simmons glanced up at him and he flashed the screen at her before returning to scan the attached notification and marking what seemed important. “Ugh. There goes physical evidence.” She shook her head. “Quick saw through the spine and a flesh scrape. Scoop and dash. Dirty technique, but I suppose they got what they wanted. What's the rest?”

“More of these interlopers are local, which is not news. However, we're to skip this morgue and save ourself further trouble. She's verified that the same has been done to the nurse and quite likely the station owner. New order is to meet her at this designated location in... West Virginia. As soon as possible.” He read off the destination to her.

“Hah.” Simmons shook her head and buttoned her light blue coat shut. “There's a little laugh under the circumstances. Just up the road from Quantico, actually. Well, at least we found some of what we came for.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “Think the two below have slipped off? We need to get moving. It's some hours on the road to make the meet.”

He moved closer to the window to peer down through the veil of the curtain, not touching it. “The two have, but we ought to be careful leaving. There's definitely more out there now, looking for anything out of place.”

“Can you just make us invisible till we get to the car or something?”

“I'd prefer not until I must.” He tilted his head, looking for a wider view and being careful to not rustle the curtains. “Better to save the energy in case of real need. I'll mask us if I see watchers, though.”

“You're being freshly cautious.”

“This new faction killed that unctuous medical examiner,” said Loki, in the tone of a bored clerk. He didn't notice her sharp gasp, too busy picking out darker shadows against the wall of the building and marking their tracks. “That so much is irrelevant to me, but for the knowledge that they _will_ strike at need. I said I'd avoid us conflict, I'm trying to do that.”

She said his name, her voice chiding.

He rolled a grey-green eye over at her and pulled away from the window. “Oh, what? _I'm_ not going to weep for him. They used him cruelly and they tossed him aside. Cold work, yes, and perhaps not particularly deserved.”

Simmons shook her head. She understood that he wasn't human and wouldn't react to all things the same as she might, but still. The brusqueness in him was an unbreakable wall, a startling reminder. “He was a rude old man, but I _hate_ when people get hurt in our wake. No, Loki, it's not deserved at all.”

The frozen thing in him held firm. “I'm simply not going to get wrought up over every piece of collateral damage that crosses my road. You don't mark out a lifespan like mine and permit that, you'd go mad.” He shrugged, gesturing for her to follow him out of the room and towards the entry of the tiny apartment. “I think we've all had _quite_ enough of me going mad, regardless of the reasoning. Might we go, please?”

. . .

There _were_ more of them in the building, footsteps tracing slow paths through stairwells and crisscrossing the halls. Simmons tugged him down an unused and creaky staircase that he muted as best he could. “Why are they coming now? Just bad luck?”

“Don't know. Might be they're guessing who's in play against them and are stepping up in accordance. Backtracking the victims _is_ your standard investigative playbook, and not just SHIELD's, correct?” She nodded up at him. “Then it may well occur to them to lay traps around the other corpses and see what foxes come running to feed. It's what I would do.”

She couldn't help a little exasperated sarcasm, still thinking ruefully of the dead examiner. “The list of things _you_ would do in a similar circumstance is vast and occasionally disturbing.”

He went dead quiet for a moment, while she regretted the sharpness of her tone. When he talked, his voice was steady and calm, his attention firmly on their surroundings. “When we get out of here, please don't harass me all night for the crime of not being a human or I'm going to spend my revenge telling you just how many people my famed brother kills without remorse on a _good_ week.” He shook his head, moving down the staircase and listening to distant rustling. “Enough. There's a pair moving close. I might have to burn some fair energy after all, to keep that promise I made.”

. . .

He did have to. Three more men in plain suits passed dangerously close to them in the lobby, not realizing that the still air next to the elevators held the targets they sought. Simmons remained close in his wake, the proximity making the costly spell, that tangling, multi-layered veil of invisibility, easier for him to weave around them. He maintained the shimmer of empty air without a crack for long, straining minutes, although he was forced to waver it to get the automated door to permit them through. More chancy finagling, an art built from centuries of practice. That drew a puzzled glance from some of their pursuers, and he pulled at Simmons' arm to hurry her before the others came too close. And then the next warning - “We're going to run through the lot.”

“Are you certain?” She didn't bother to keep the worry out of her voice.

“I want to spare myself enough energy to keep the vehicle changing in case, and I've else in mind besides. I'm not a battery. I can't run complicated magic for days, much less hours, without costs.” He watched, waiting for the closest patrol to turn away. _“Go!”_

_. . ._

_“Drive!”_ was his next snapped command as they tumbled into the vehicle. Three armed men in plain suits were charging across the lot at them. No shots were fired yet; they'd both done what they could to ensure no clear aim, but now they were sitting targets. “Don't worry about what I'm about to do, just push the damned thing.”

Simmons didn't think, she reacted, slamming the gearshift into position and picking out the fastest route away from the building as the passenger door slammed shut. Defensive driving had been one of her least favorite training courses at the Hub, but it didn't mean she scored poorly at it. The tires screeched as she gunned it, pulling the durable vehicle over a curb to cut a turn. Next to her, Loki muttered something. A enormous flash of light filled the parking lot behind them, nearly startling her into jerking the wheel. Her training held firm and she grit her teeth, pulling them onto a main road past a tree line. As far as their pursuers knew, they'd vanished.

“I changed the vehicle's illusion as well,” said Loki, slumping a little into the seat. A hand passed over his face. She glanced at him and saw a tiny line of weary grey under the eyes, like those of a marathon runner in need of a sip of salty water. “You're fine now to travel normally. And if you happen to see a late night sandwich shop that's not made of plastics and despair, kindly let me know.”

“Did you hurt them?”

  
When he spoke again, his voice was snappish. “No I damned well didn't hurt them. Spots in their eyes for days and I startled the entire building no doubt, but I didn't hurt the wee fragile creatures with the guns pointed at us.”

“That's not-” She shook her head, fighting to calm down her adrenaline. She pulled the SUV into the slow lane, steadying her breathing and trying to figure out where the freeway she was going to need was. Abruptly she noticed the front hood of the car was a new and common-looking deep red, replacing the dingy Chevy. “I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to pick a fight.”

“Weren't you?” He slumped further.

She inhaled once, then exhaled. Her heart finally slowed down to something more normal while she tried to think from his side. To him, she clearly had. To him, her question followed from the events before. She shook her head. “I truly wasn't. I _am_ sorry.”

He finished rubbing at his face, not looking at her. “Do you think I'm overly fond of how brief human life is? Do you think for a second that does not and will not trouble me, having chosen willingly to stay?”

Simmons looked stricken. “No... I never thought of that.”

“And why would you?” He sighed, leaning a little to fish out his phone. “You cannot parallel our moralities so easily. And I simply cannot spare what little I have to give for those lives I pass even more briefly. I _can't._ ”

Simmons glanced at him again after absorbing that, watching in new disbelief as his fingers flicked through the list of addresses. “That's not-”

He looked up, the corner of his mouth forming the start of a wry smile. “Yes. Skye's list of pizza places she so kindly put on my phone. There's apparently one yet open just a few miles from here.” By way of offering a truce, his voice became comically defeated. “I give up. Feed me disgusting chemicals and cheese. I'm starving. I'll even offer a dissertation about _why_ true-weave invisibility is so wearying if that'll get me a large one.”

She found herself laughing. “Double pepperoni.”

“Gods. I'm going to be ill.”

. . .

The morning sun was sharp and bright when they pulled into West Virginia. These roads were familiar to Simmons, and she took back roads towards the old industrial neighborhood only miles away from the headquarters of the FBI. Loki watched curiously out of the window, less tired than he'd been just a few hours before due to both a pizza he declared moderately horrifying and a catnap. “Looks suitably like nothing.”

“Underneath the refinery is an old SHIELD storehouse, a biological one. I did a little training there, but we don't use it much lately. We can't. It's too close to the agency and so we must be subtle.” She drove past, drawing a glance from him. That got another smile. “If we pulled up, the residential security would go on full alert for intruders. The actual entrance is up a few blocks yet. We can be a _little_ clever, when we like.”

“ _Just_ a little.”

. . .

May was waiting for them inside the alley entrance. “You can brief me on your trip in a bit. I just barely beat you here. I know my contact's inside, but we haven't had a chance to talk much yet past a few texts. Tried to give a warning.” The last was said with a flicker up at the bemused face of the demigod. “So, I'm just going to say this: I've got it under control. If something happens, let me handle it.”

She led them in, down through dim corridors that connected one seemingly dead business with another. Past a triple-lock door and a tired-looking security team. And down into the colder floors, tightly-sealed glass doors revealing numbered and ordered contents.

The one she settled on was downright freezing. Simmons tugged her coat closer around herself as May let them into a titanium-lined vault, whistling softly in a greeting at the back of the woman inside. Her long red hair was knotted up, wisps of it reaching the shoulders of a plain black jacket. “Nat.”

The slim figure turned and then crossed black-clad arms tight across her chest. There was a blade just barely visible inside one thick cuff. Simmons felt her eyes open wide, _certain_ she had not actually heard Loki behind her whispering the words ' _Hel and shit incarnate.'_

Natasha Romanoff's eyes flickered first to May in pure disbelief, and then up to Loki's face where he stood behind Agent Simmons, the stare narrowing into something deadly sharp. Her voice was a threat. “I thought you were kidding, Mel.”


	8. Fodor's Travel Guide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aka: the plot dump chapter, with added interpersonal strife

“I'm that well known for my sense of humor, huh?” May quirked a dry almost-smile at Natasha, trying to defuse her and not really expecting it to go down that easily.

“No, but there's always the first time. I kinda hoped this was it.” The infamous 'black widow's' arms stayed crossed and her body began to relax into an easy pose – the kind that could lead to an instant kill in most fights. To his credit, Loki stayed stock-still behind Simmons. At a glance, May could tell he was painfully aware that he was benefiting from a kind of human shield.

To his equal discredit, Loki opened his mouth before May could try to kick him. “Is this perhaps a good time to apologize for an unforgivably – if at the time purposefully – rude encounter?”

May shot him a look hot enough to toast Greenland from space. Remarkably, he shut up again.

“Are you serious? I know  _ exactly  _ what you said to me.” Natasha looked at May, still in that easy, incredibly dangerous dancer's pose. “Does Phil know he's gone crazy? What the  _ hell  _ is this?”

“I told you-”

“I'm looking for more.” An arm raised to point at Loki. He refused to budge, but he did blink. Once. Hard. “Why is he here?”

“Because he's on this case, and he's pulled his weight so far.” May glanced over as Simmons pulled the bagged envelope out of her coat to demonstrate. She arched an eyebrow in approval. The exchange didn't do much to change the tense look on Loki's face.

“ это пиздец. I mean, you have to be _ kidding _ me. ”

“Nat.” May slumped her back against the wall. “It's Phil's call. I promise, he hasn't gone crazy. I can brief you, but I'm serious, it'll take hours and you'll want a drink. Or, you know, ten.”

The pointed finger swiveled to May, where it became distinctly less threatening. “We're still on for next month, right?” She watched as May nodded, dropping the other shoe. “You're buying.”

May pushed away from the wall, acting shocked. “I bought last time!”

“Extenuating circumstances.” Natasha stared at Loki. None of the implicit threat left her face. “If he comes within five feet of me, I'm going to taze him until his bones glow. That's just to start.”

May shot him a look of warning, knowing Natasha saw it too. This part wasn't over yet. She kept her voice light. “That's fair.”

. . .

_ “Good lord! What did you say to her?”  _ hissed Simmons under her breath at Loki before following the two senior agents into the deeper vault.

_ “I'm certainly not going to repeat it!”  _ he whispered back, never taking his eyes off Romanoff and the various weapons he'd spotted hidden along the edges of her clothes. Of all the would-be 'avengers' he'd met, many could be gambled with or pushed about long enough to escape or overcome in some way. This one had been far cleverer than he'd expected. By the end of the whole mess he'd drawn two private conclusions – stay well away from Banner's fury, and the female was the deadlier of the species. Being dragged back to Asgard afterward was just fine with him.  _ “It made sense at the time.” _

_ “What could  _ possibly _ make sense about permanently making Natasha Romanoff, of all people on the planet, deadly furious with you?” _

He shook his head at her, not at all willing to rehash the past yet again. It struck him that there was a distressing familiarity between how Romanoff was reacting to him versus his earliest encounters with Melinda May herself. Much less Coulson. 

_ Gods, but life has grown strange.  _ He sighed to himself. Talking was never going to buy him any peace from her open dislike, he'd burnt out that option. Instead, the unlikely May must barter his position with the Director on his behalf, to keep yet another person with plenty of just cause from tearing his head off. Like May, he had no doubts Romanoff could invent some distressingly efficient method.

Natasha stopped at the far edge of the vault, accessing a digital panel with a series of quick inputs. One of the cases inserted almost seamlessly into the wall clicked open, and May moved to help her pull it further open. Another morgue's freezer, though this one was meant for a slightly different purpose. May talked as she and Natalie easily pulled the bag out. There was a smaller compartment attached, but they left its contents alone for now. “The way these new guys sliced up our victim after the fact reminded me of something else that came down the pike the last few months.” She looked across her end of the bag at Loki. “You called it.”

The bag dropped smoothly onto a table in the center of the room. Loki glanced at it and then at Natasha, whose tightly guarded expression expanded to add a thin layer of fresh disbelief to it. Loki kept his voice calm and steady, the only rational defense he had. “Called what?”

“Three victims. In your words:  _ that we knew of.”  _ May sighed. “Turns out we've got at least five more bodies up and down the coast found with their spines carved out, filed as a separate federal investigation just weird enough that we'd gotten some reports. Not like what we saw at first, so it wouldn't connect. But since they got to Stutgart? Yeah, something's up.”

“Is this one of the previous five?” Simmons asked.

Natasha shook her head. “This is old business. When May pieced both things together, she realized it reminded her of something I've dealt with before. So she called me.” She unzipped the bag to reveal the open corpse, so frozen there was no smell. It could have been a statue. She put her hands down on the table and glanced at Simmons. “Take a peek. You won't miss it.”

Simmons stepped forward and scanned the cavity, finishing with a small gasp as she saw the tiny marks along the spine – a different configuration, different patterning, but the slice near the base was similar. “Bloody hell. He was wired just like our Stutgart.” She looked up, startled. “Who was he?”

“A Latverian deep cover agent of my _extremely_ brief acquaintance.” Natasha took a step back to rest her shoulders against the cool doors, crossing her arms and studying reactions. Simmons looked horrified. The unwelcome visitor looked at her, his expression careful but genuinely blank. She arched an eyebrow in response, her voice acidic and cheerful both. “Oh, he doesn't know?”

“Nat.”

Loki watched the silent battle between what seemed to be two old friends before trying to talk, sticking firmly to that neutral, calm tone. “I've come across the name in the information that SHIELD has given me, but little else, I'm afraid.” He let a touch of irony creep into his voice, not liking the way she studied him. It was as if the glass barrier between them never broke. “You've got me at a disadvantage.”

Slow, unamused blink, followed by frosty silence.

May took a step and broke the caustic stare between the two, forcing Natasha to look at her instead. “Can I get a moment with you?”

Natasha strode out of the room as an answer, still staring over her shoulder at the demigod. May followed her out, glancing unreadably at her agents.

Loki cleared his throat, speaking lightly to the uncomfortable looking Simmons. “Well. I think this is going  _ marvelously.” _

. . .

Natasha waited until the door shut again before whirling on May. “Come on. What's he got on you? Did he get the staff back, is that why Coulson's letting him walk around? You can tell me, Melinda, and we'll get this fixed. Meanwhile, we're just going to leave him in there with a vault full of SHIELD evidence? Do we not learn from mistakes anymore?”

“We do. That's the point.” May absorbed her friend's long, angry stare.

“I can get Barton here in an hour for backup. He's going to scream and then possibly vomit when I tell him what I'm seeing.” Romanoff looked away, still riled underneath a calm face. “I don't buy this. What's going on here?”

May shook her head. “Nothing. That's the hell of it. He's an agent now.” She didn't blink at the disgusted noise Natasha made. “We need to get the job done, Nat. It started plain. Now we're looking at something that might go deep. That means we use everything we've got. You, me,  _ him.  _ He's my problem, let me deal with it. Work with me.”

“Боже мой. You're already pulling the den mother tone on me. You know I hate that.” She unfolded her arms and sagged against the wall. “Look, you know how New York went down. You know what we had on that guy. You can't just ask me to go along with this. You know what he is.”

“Exactly right. I know what he's been. And what he is. Right now, believe it or not – and yeah, I understand the disbelief - he's a legitimate agent.” Yes, she was doing the calm, unstoppable den mother voice. She kept doing it, knowing that the reason it annoyed Natasha was because it could work.

“Give me something for proof. Anything to hook into, before you ask me to drop high level intelligence with him even in the same zip code as me.” The infamous agent rubbed hard at her forehead, thumb and fingers working the temples with a migraine coming in like a rocket. “Come on, Mel. Don't make me wait a month on this one.”

May thought quickly. “New York again. Last year. The sinkhole that ate half of Greenwich Village.”

“God. I got the after-report on that through Fury.  _ Some _ sinkhole. Invaders from outer space wasn't enough, now we needed something from one of those horror novels about 'endless inner darkness' or whatever.” Natasha stopped studying the floor and looked at May, waiting for the rest.

“You didn't get all of it. Nobody outside Phil's core team did, not even Fury. We played it close to keep people from hitting the roof. Was a risky call, but it paid off.” May jerked her chin back towards the vault. “It was his fault again. No surprise there. Then... he fixed it. He made a lot of mistakes during that situation, and he made most of them right.”

Natasha snorted, not convinced. “What was the catch?”

“No catch. For whatever reason, he'd show up now and then and have drinks with Phil. He did a job for us in Montana, no strings. Then, get this, he came to the Christmas party. God, I know how that sounds. Some other stuff in the mix, now he's here.” May crossed the room, putting a hand on Natasha's arm. “Believe me. I know. Before this started, the  _ first _ thing Phil did was pop him through a wall again with the Destroyer prototype.”

That got a slim smile. “I remember the dev department started calling that thing 'Coulson's Revenge.' Kinda fitting. So you trust him now?”

“Nat, you know me better than that. I don't trust  _ anybody.” _ May laughed. “Just don't kill him right here, okay? Come on. I'll tell you the rest next month. Let's go tell the kids about that wonderful tourist destination, Latveria.”

“I am going to order  _ so much _ top shelf vodka, May. You are not prepared.”

“I'll borrow the expense card.”

. . .

The temperature in the room upon return did not exactly warm. The immediate threat in the spy's posture lessened somewhat, however, and so did everyone else's tension. “You don't know anything about Latveria because there's almost nothing to know.” Natasha didn't bother to look at the demigod, her voice brisk and clinical. It was still an upgrade. “We've got what we call 'cold spots' in the world; regions with almost no publicly known or verifiable information. Most people think of North Korea when someone mentions no-go zones like this. There's much more than that.” She finally glanced at him.

Loki resettled against the wall, content to keep still. Near him, Simmons wrung her hands together now and then.

“Islands we don't put on maps, portions of the Japanese coast, hell, we've got a whole landmass we've been keeping people away from inside Antarctica. But two are pretty notable – one's been keeping private in the central-northern African continent, and the other is Latveria. Hard carved out of the Banat region some fifty years ago, taking over little pieces of Turkey, Romania, and Serbia and making one of the scariest tiny nations on the planet.” 

She watched the alien incline his head with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. “How was that done? Do we know?”

_ We.  _ Natasha didn't blink at his choice of language. “From what little we've found, at first a number of local disaffected Rromani and Hungarian communities banded together under one family. The von Bardas family, we know that much. They moved into the region from Austria after the world wars. The communities were sick of being abused and abandoned by the government. Von Bardas gave them an alternative.” Natasha sighed. “Not a bad plan by itself. Except, around forty years ago, this small little struggling nation went dark. We heard a rumor of a coup, then something more sinister than that. Witchcraft. Murders. Travelers in the area shared tall tales about demon sacrifices, but none of it bore out. Then the borders sealed. By the late 70's, you were  _ not _ getting in. But they were occasionally sending agents out to watch everyone else.”

She turned and pulled the small package out of the joined compartment, glancing at the corpse. “Two years ago Google, of all damn things, nearly kicked off an international incident. They flew two experimental map drones over central Europe from a low-space orbit. Latveria knocked them down and we  _ still  _ don't know how. Their information got transmitted home anyway. The only thing they saw of Latveria was an open, blank space. Like an eraser scratched over the face of the planet. They're invisible to  _ every  _ tech device we've got. Five days after the drones got shot down, a single emissary came out of the country. She identified herself as Lucia von Bardas and got into four US Senator's offices, plus she wrangled a direct, private, and sealed communication with the President. The tone of the messages she delivered was a clear one: We are not to screw around with Latveria.”

She tossed the package onto the table, pulling it open to reveal the bundle of wires that had once been inserted through a body. “Well.  _ Someone  _ is screwing around with them now. Your discovery of this before-and-after game with the bodies is bad news, tying up a few loose ends we were chasing elsewhere.”

May looked at her agents, her expression grim. “The new current theory is someone is trying to steal Latverian tech, and they're murdering to do it.”

Natasha nodded for emphasis. “This is an example of the stuff their agents are enhanced with. This set is not what the corpse I'm using as an example had inside him, because this guy burnt out his chip and his life himself before I could get him to admit he was operating on Latverian orders. That's the saving grace we've had so far; if their spies get caught trying to push our boundaries, they're disposable. It's part of the game. We can't ever verify the operator's origin one hundred percent, and they just won't bat an eye. Hardest poker tournament in the world.” She gestured for Simmons to take a closer look. “Want to guess when this set was manufactured?”

“My goodness. Fitz would guess better than I, I think, but the cybernetic miniaturization is astonishing. Nobody's working on this level, except perhaps Stark, and even then I don't think he could produce it yet on a mass scale.” She looked up, taking her hand away from the miniscule knot of wires and biochips. “I would have said quite recent. A prototype. I'll assume that's not close.”

Natasha inclined her head with a thin smile. “This set was pulled from a different agent in 1986. I've heard the story on how that happened. It's not pretty. Whatever's inside Latveria's borders, it's operating on a tech level so advanced that they occasionally let things sneak out just to piss us off.”

“Or to show off,” said Loki, quietly shifting against the wall.

“Same thing.”

He arched an eyebrow in agreement. “So what's different here?”

“At this point, it's looking like all eight known victims were Latverian agents. The problem is that none of them were active. Sleepers. By the rules of this twisted 'game,' that's meant off-limits. We watch, _ if  _ we can find them. We don't touch until the buzzer goes off and they wake up to play.”

“Or else sleeping, silent Latveria might grow upset.”

The tense expression never left Natasha' face. “And the very real fear is that if they get upset  _ enough _ , we're gonna find out what sort of big boom they can brew. They're sending out little bits of future tech like Kinder Surprises. They've never needed to play the open threat game on a global scale. Just the scraps we've seen is enough to make every nation in the world privately tiptoe around a country small enough to fit inside Rhode Island.”

“Oh, _dear_ ,” whispered Simmons.

Natasha gave the younger agent a grim smile of sympathy. “So. You guys found an envelope belonging to one of these sleeper agents.”

“We did, yes.” Simmons produced it again, handing it over to Natasha with a nod from May. “We didn't examine the contents at the scene. I wanted to get it back to our lab, just in case. Have you seen such things before?”

“Couple of the other victims we found on our end, found something like it about seven years back. It's a standard secret message gag.” Natasha opened the plastic bag and pulled out the envelope, clearly unafraid of anything else that might be contained. Another quick gesture and she pulled out the folded paper inside, flapping it between bare fingers. “Again, it's never definitive proof. Nothing we can trace. They make sure of that.”

Her next action unfolded the note, made of the same rough fiber weave.

“It's blank?” Loki rolled his eyes and slammed his back against the wall with obvious irritation. “We went through a certain amount of annoyance and trouble for the damn thing, please tell me there's more than that.”

Unwillingly, Natasha quirked a tiny smile. “A little more.” She pulled a small field kit from one of her pockets, tugging free a wire with an exposed end. The sort of thing that could be used to open a door or rig a vehicle. She wove the wire into the paper. “Nothing special about the charge they use to do this, unfortunately. But get this,” she said, and then she shocked the wire to life with a flicker of energy from the kit.

A handful of the woven fibers flickered alight and pale green in the center of the paper, forming two words.

_Come home._

As the electrical hum faded, so did the message.

Loki lifted a hand to his face and pulled down along one cheek. “The warning didn't come quickly enough. Other options became necessities. Our three and the needle.” Natasha was staring at him. He didn't notice at first.

“And poor Mr. Stutgart never looked at his. Destroyed it instead. Why, you think?” Simmons looked up at Loki, who only shook his head. “And why the sudden change in motif?” She looked at May next. “The prior five, what, you're telling us they were killed and gutted where our three were first done cleanly, chemically, to remove their devices. To what purpose?”

“Our interlopers killed the first five. Latveria itself arranged the deaths of our three. To try and stop the interference from happening.” Loki looked at Natasha, whose brows knotted in surprise. Then he looked down at the scientist. “To build a firebreak against this attack. Left the corpses as a warning to their hunters.”

Simmons looked up at him, paling.

Natasha looked away, clearly hating that she was about to agree with him. “Yeah. Latveria started mercy killing their own agents when they didn't move out fast enough. Protect their technology, maybe their information. And all that that hasn't stopped whoever else is involved from trying to collect the corpses, which means they're persistent and foolish.”

“So now we need to find out who's pushing on Latveria and get this finished before they get mad and lash out in a bigger way.” May moved away from the door to regard everyone in turn. “We're going back to base to regroup and plan the next move. Nat, I'm asking you to join us. You're the only decent source we have on the country.”

“Separate vehicles, yes?” Loki asked when Romanoff nodded to her, genuine hope in his voice.

May couldn't resist. “I thought she'd ride with you guys.” She turned her head to look at Natasha. “I'm kidding.”

The spy sighed. “You _did_ grow a sense of humor, Mel. It just kinda sucks.”


	9. Bad Influence

“Phil!” Skye jogged up the corridor to catch up with the Director, on his way back upstairs from one of the other communication rooms. “Got some possibilities already from what May sent ahead. They're due to arrive in about another hour, by the way.”

Coulson turned and walked backwards for a second, giving her time to pull aside him and slow down. He studied her face, hair knotted back and grey under her eyes as they walked together up the hall. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine.” She looked down at the notes on her tablet, looking up again at the silence. She sighed, a little _ugh_ under her breath. “I'm going through one of my not-sleeping deals, yeah. It's okay. I'm not losing control of _that_ or anything. It's... you know. Other stuff. Still happens now and then.” She cleared her throat and waggled her tablet at him.

“Keep updated with medical. Get rest one way or another.” He gestured at her tablet. “Whatcha got?”

“I rolled with a couple hunches and decided to match up timelines. First thing I did was take a page from our new agent's old crazy-cynical 'you can be pointlessly obvious with your attempts at cleverness' playbook.”

He gave her a blank look.

“It's easy. I can say pretty firmly that whoever's dicking around with the Latverians isn't another established government. Collectively, governments tend to be too slow, too chicken, and not clever enough to play hide and seek like what we're seeing here. Not even Putin tries to mess with these guys, you know? If the world's literal Bond villain isn't FSBing it up along their border, then it's not anyone on that scale. So I looked private.”

“Everyone in this house a rotten influence on everyone else.”

“ _Tell me_. I checked cloud storage, he's listened to _Let It Go_ like eight times since I put it on his phone as a joke. I guarantee he will never, ever admit it.” Skye rolled her eyes with a laugh and kept trucking. “So who would crave advanced Latverian tech _and_ be willing to be dumb enough to go get it?”

He saw instantly where she was going with this. “Tech companies. To reverse engineer and sell it.”

“Dolla, dolla bills, y'all. Not only that, has to be a tech company big enough and influential enough to be able to do crap like this and think they can get away with it. I didn't jump right to the obvious guess, I broke it down all carefully and got myself there the right way. But I got bad news for you.”

Roxxon Oil. Phil sighed. Yeah, this was getting worse, fast. “Tell me how you got there.”

“Matched up some stock holdings and some insider information on miniaturization breakthroughs from various companies through the last three quarters. Of them all on the field, only one of Roxxon's divisions – Brand, their tech outpost - posted about some funky new tidbits they were working on about two months ago. Three weeks after the first of the original gutted bodies showed up, and just under the wire for the annual 'yay team we're awesome!' pep talk.” She flicked the screen on her tablet, showing him a handful of internal promotional memos. “Don't ask how I got these. Or do, y'know, you're the boss.”

He took the tablet from her and scanned them with a frown. “Graphene based nano-wiring breakthroughs for possible medical and military applications. 100% communication uptime, no loss. The new era of cybernetic enhancements, blah blah. Got the Army already sniffing around. That's gonna be a rich contract if they can actually mass produce it. It's damning, Skye, especially the timing, but I'm not seeing the proof yet.”

“Me, either. For one thing, the enemies the team described weren't the Hand or anybody cool. Just cash and carry mercs from some outfit or another. Private contractors. But I think it's where to start. Might be them thinking they're being clever, might be Roxxon has even more combat resources on tap than we thought.”

The Director nodded and handed the tablet back, deciding to not keep chiding her as she yawned hugely into a fist. “I agree with you. Good work. So keep it going. Where do we go next?”

Skye giggled and pulled up another page to flash it at him. “I say we send _someone_ out to question this guy, see if he's got any scuttlebutt on his old 'friends' we can scare out of him.”

Phil stopped walking and stared at the surveillance shot, picking out the details of the high class restaurant and the familiarly slick, luxury car-salesman looking goon sitting alone at a table. “Where's he at?”

“Right now? Silicon Valley, trying to peddle his solo act for cash. He'll be there the next few days, too.” Skye hugged her tablet close, clearly pleased with herself. One thumb fidgeted against the opposite wrist's black pressure gauntlet.

The Director thought it through, seeing the plan she had in mind and nodding his agreement with it. “You get to tell Loki he's on for this part. I'll prep some backup for him so he can really put on a scare-show if he wants.”

“Me?”

“Your footwork, your call. Big new world of responsibility, Skye. Break it to him however you want. Be the Anna to his Elsa or whatever.” He lifted a finger along with an eyebrow as Skye snorted loud enough to echo in the hall. “Don't tell him we're cracking jokes like that. Just be advised, Ian Quinn is not one of his favorite people.”

 . . .

Simmons and Mack watched Fitz fumble artfully with the wiring Romanoff loaned the laboratory, looking occasionally at the pictures of corpses old and new. The finished test slides of the samples taken from Stutgart were sitting in a tube rack on the shelf, long since the lost focus of the investigation. Without anything useful to hook into from the chemical compound used to kill the teacher, they were left with speculations instead. “This would be much easier if I weren't being stared at.”

“Sorry, Fitz.” Simmons grimaced and turned away slightly, leaning her hip against the counter and still not sure how she fit into this particular scene anymore.

“There's been a definite improvement, I can see that straightaway. The holes you photographed in Stutgart are about 65% smaller than the 1986 set. That's re-remarkable.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Fitz shake his head at the brief stutter. “And you realize that's still not current.”

“How do you mean?” She turned back, glancing up to meet the eyes of the watchful Mack, who was mostly studying the electrical output of the device on a screen.

“Well.” Fitz set the nest of wires down to scruff a hand along the side of his head, fidgeting. “Unless they bring them back to upgrade regularly – and Stutgart hasn't been out of country in five years at least – his implantation was made when he became a sleeper agent. Which looks like it was when he was still in his twenties.”

“Yeah.” Mack flicked the screen down, hunkering onto his elbows to look at the pair of scientists. “Didn't the paperwork say he did a backpacking tour of Europe out of college?”

“That's right, he did.” Simmons bit her lip. “Moved here when he was a child, a few trips back. That was the notable one. So early, mid 90's. The backpacking trip was in '93.”

“That's when it was done. Long hiking trip, plenty of time to wire up and recover. That's a mad jump in less than a decade. Can't even imagine what a _new_ set might look like.” Fitz scruffled again, backing away from his worktable to pace behind Mack. “We've only recently started using carbon nanotubes, and in still narrow applications. Who knows what Latveria's got now. Maybe they're not even sending agents anymore, just... wee tiny bugs or such. And this is just one thing we know about.” He flexed a hand at Simmons. “You remember our one professor at the academy? Uhh.... Political landscapes and growth theories or suchlike?”

“Waller.” She laughed. “She was funny.”

“D'you remember the third semester, though? It was the first time we ever heard of Latveria.” He nodded at her, grinning a little at her smile. Again, that whisper of old times.

“I do!”

Fitz turned to Mack. “Did you get her for any of your training?” Mack shook his head. “Ms. Waller was an expert, _especially_ on balkanization and the Serbia-Croatian conflicts. Everything in that region, over the last sixty years. She was amazing.” He took a breath. “The first time she said the name of that country to the class, it was in the exact tone you'd hear the word _Voldemort_ in.”

“So why doesn't anybody talk more about it? I know I never got much of a briefing on the place. Why do we keep it a big mystery? I mean, the maps are right there.” Mack picked up a pen to point it at the commercially available world map pinned to the far wall. Sure enough, the tiny dot of Latveria was visible on it. Devoid of information, but visible.

“Because even we apparently knew of only two people that ever crossed the border of Latveria to gather intel in the last thirty years and then made it back out alive. Neither remained inside for longer than three days and _neither_ made it to the capital. No, not even our very best. One killed himself a year later. The other?” Simmons crossed her arms to underline her point. “She's visiting. Which is why I know that scary little tidbit at all; from the brief Romanoff gave to Coulson when we got back. It used to be quite compartmentalized, apparently.”

“So, no kidding, the-country-not-to-be-named.” Mack shook his head. “No wonder the Director looks tense. What's the next move?”

“Don't know for certain, I'm not privy yet.” Simmons shrugged. “Skye's got something in the works, I think. Seems like some of us get a tiny downtime meanwhile. Nobody thinks Latveria's going to just fly into a rage overnight. But then, we don't know bloody anything.” She finished with a click of her tongue.

Mack snorted. “Some downtime. Everybody chill while the doomsday clock ticks. So here's my other question. If we weren't finding these sleeper agents before all this started going down, how was this group doing it?”

Fitz looked across his worktable at Simmons, who shook her head. “We simply don't know for certain yet. No one wishes to speculate.”

. . .

Dario Agger stared down into the briefcase, picking up a tangle of wires from the mess of torn parts before letting it drop again. The expression on his face made the man on the other side of his desk recoil. Agger took his tinted glasses off and let them clatter carelessly to the table – if the eight thousand dollar pair of shades chipped, it meant _nothing_ to him. He reached past the briefcase and picked up the black marble nameplate that always sat at the front of his desk, dancing it horizontally between the fingertips of both hands like a cheerleader's spirit stick. “What does this say?” he asked his contracted agent, his voice low and calm.

“Um. Sir?”

“Read it off to me.”

The man cleared his throat and did as he was told. “Dario Agger. CEO: Roxxon Oil & Brand Industries.”

“Is there any small print? Go ahead. Look close.”

The man licked his lips and leaned forward, squinting. “N-”

The nameplate smacked him incredibly hard across the face and the man tumbled to the ground. Agger was on his feet, roaring as he chucked the nameplate hard at the groaning figure. “ _NO!_ What you are _not_ reading, you incompetent waste, is ' _Scrapyard Boss._ ' What you are _not_ reading is ' _Pawn Shop Broker_.' I send you backwards thick-necked malcontents out with the best shit my money can buy, and I have one simple order: Take this information I found for you and get me my tech. _Intact._ ”

Agger shoved the briefcase off his table, scattering the busted contents across the floor towards the man cradling his jaw and staring at him through pain-bleary eyes. “You were _told how_. And you bring me a bag of garbage indistinguishable from the dumpster behind a dead Radio Shack! What _precisely_ am I going to do with this? Give it to my board chairmen so their kids can use it for a school science fair project? Give me something, you complete idiot.”

“It's not our fault!” snapped the man on the floor. Blood dripped from his nose. In another act of defiance, he picked up the nameplate and tried to snap it against the floor.

Agger stomped from behind his desk and easily tore his nameplate away from the man, slamming it back onto his desk. “It's titanium backed, Christ.” He tugged at the legs of his Parisian bespoke trousers as he hunkered down next to his contract agent, his voice dulcet and quiet again. “Try again, Gabriel. How exactly was it not your fault?”

“First batch of people, yeah, we tore the stuff out fine. The lab got them all, you know that. The last three, that stuff there, those weren't our call. Someone's screwing us. They were dead before we got there! Then these other freaks started sniffing around before we could pull the corpses!”

Agger rolled his eyes. “Oh, is that all?” He sighed, his fury diffusing like it never existed. “Well, I can't say I wasn't warned.” He snapped his fingers at the man on the floor before standing up again and going back to his desk, dropping himself lazily in his chair and stretching his legs up onto the desk. “Okay. Clean up your blood and get out. I've got it from here.” He glanced at the man at the floor, staring up at him in stunned hurt and disbelief. He tugged a box of tissues out of one of the drawers and flung it at the other man. “What? You did your job. The back half of your pay will get sent out tonight.”

“So that's it?”

“You want to go another round with something else on my desk?” Agger gave him a nasty smile. “Or you want to play with me direct? I know what Operations calls me behind my back. You wanna find out why?” He flicked a hand at the box of tissues, reaching for the call button on his desk phone. “We're done here.”

_“Sir,”_ came the prompt, prim tone of his secretary. He watched the blood smear across his nice marble floor as the mercenary agent tried to sponge it up, the space between his eyes tightening his vision into a red veil as the offending stain spread despite the man on the floor's best efforts. _“What can I do for you?”_

“If our priority client calls again tonight, put her through instantly. I'll be staying in the office for another couple hours, but if I leave, push directly to my personal phone. The complication she predicted is in play. Can you do that for me, Greta?”

_“Absolutely, sir.”_ His procurer staggered out of the room, clutching the bloody tissues he'd used to half-wreck Agger's floor. He was tempted to take it out of the asshole's check, but the hell with it. Can't be said Agger wasn't a fair boss. Hard, but fair.

He smiled in approval, plain enough for her to hear it in his voice. Greta never had to hear the beast in him. At least he had one person around him that was forever competent. “Thank you, darlin'. Oh, and send in the cleaning staff real quick for me. Little mess on the floor.”


	10. Professional Grief Counseling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a tiny spoiler for 1986's 'Aliens' directed by James Cameron in this chapter, on the off chance this is a problem. But if you hang out at my house and haven't seen any of these movies, oh, you're watching 'em.

Skye wandered into the rec room, noticing dully that it was going on two in the morning and the only light in the room was coming from the entertainment center. The television was playing quietly at least, which her insomniac's headache was thankful for. She stood behind the ugly couch that was just long enough for the resident demigod to flop comfortably on and rubbed at her thumping forehead. “You somehow on night watch even though you just got back, or is this one of those deals where you're not tired for days?”

“I napped in the car on the way back from South Carolina.” Loki paused the film, leaving Sigourney Weaver standing frozen in a blueish-green room with a pissed off expression. Skye heard the flopping sound of the plastic remote dropping onto his prone chest.

Skye squinted at the image on the screen, her head tilting as she put it together. Some of the sleepy weight left her voice. “Are you seriously watching _Aliens_ of, like, your own free will? The hell is going on in this place anymore.”

There was a long pause, followed by a quiet voice. “It came about via an odd recommendation. I already watched the prior tale a week ago.”

“...'Kay...” She staggered around the side of the couch, too worn out to find it weird that he immediately bent his knees to let her sit down. She reached out to pluck the thick box off the table. “I didn't even know we had a copy of the whole set.” She turned it around to look at the gleaming green back of the case, not actually reading all the tiny technical details. “You're gonna stop after this one, right?”

“I feel like I've committed to something here, regardless of of my opinions on its quality. I have to admit, the first was almost passably interesting. This one is a bit more brutal in trying to make its thematic points, but I rather like the woman's harsh persistence. Though I wonder what happens to the cat left behind. That Jonesy. Was the cat that truly laid eyes on the beast first, after all.” Loki rubbed the side of his hand across his forehead, examining the tired young woman. “What are you doing awake again? I notice it's always you finding me in here in the odd hours, torturing myself with this nonsense.”

“Dude. The other two films... they're not great. At least, if you're gonna watch the next one, watch the assembly cut. I think that's what it's called.” She put the box down. “Who recommended them?” She looked at him when he didn't answer. “Oh,” she said, realizing something. Her face wrinkled a little. “The Montana thing.”

“I don't actually see a resemblance between the architecture of these creatures and those warrens of the damned half-Chitauri, yet I think I understand now how Agent Triplett came to find one. These films were his. I found them in one of the storerooms, a few scraps of his that were missed. Some extra copies of that music he talked about during your winter. From his aunt. I remembered...” The sound of the name creased her face further. “Ah,” he said, falling quiet when he realized why.

“That had to be a rotten surprise when you got here.” Skye sighed and sat back hard against the couch, hugging her fuzzy oversized shirt around herself. Her wrists stayed buried deep in the fabric arms, hiding the gauntlets she almost always wore. She tried to keep her voice level. “I mean, I know you're all 'screw your brief tinky human lives,' but man. You just saw him not all that long ago. One of the last to actually do a big job with him before...” She shrugged and leaned further back, not aware she looked like she was trying to burrow. “Maybe your way is better,” she muttered under her breath.

“He had loyalty and a certain strength. Dry and not easily taunted, compared to Coulson's wry nature, but I don't mean that to be insulting. He defaulted to rolling easily with new situations, not puzzling at them beyond a necessary due. There's value in that.” He watched Skye pull in on herself, her eyes staring through the table. He could tell they were growing wet. “Yes. I was surprised. A far briefer life than even I expected.”

She swallowed hard, then spun her head to stare when he said the last thing she would have ever guessed from him. “He was a good man. And it was not your fault.”

“You don't know that.” She didn't mean to make the words sound so angry. It wasn't that she was angry with _him_. Just... She swallowed again, then looked away, not really understanding what she was feeling.

Loki shrugged, unruffled. “I know a few things about causing collateral damage in my wake. You're simply not the type to leave things unhealed, much less embrace chaos when it comes to you. Though clearly you are the sort to let those pains consume you when you ought to be resting.”

“He died because of what I started. It's all my fault.”

“Started by what, just existing?” He tugged his legs up a little further before rolling his eyes. “Well here's a disgustingly familiar topic I didn't even remotely wish to draw close to. The chain of events that caused you to be born, to be brought to SHIELD's shores, and that ultimately awakened this violent change in you... are not solely to your blame. They are a fate woven around you without your consent. What you do with your life from here, that's your lookout.” He sighed, then sniffed as he took the remote off his chest to clatter it onto the nearby table next to the disc case. “These changes should not be keeping you up at night. You're not a monster. You were not born one. You're not even a funny color. I insist all unholy child-eating abominations _at least_ not be a humanish pink. It's tacky. You've got to represent, so to speak. The worst you do is flit around in those atrocious shirts.”

She couldn't help staring at him in disbelief, his weird diatribe successfully distracting her. “Oh my God, I'm getting a pep talk on surviving guilt from _you_.”

“I know. It's _incredibly_ bizarre. You must have gone through a dozen iterations of this conversation with Coulson before winding up here. Resorting to my bleak shop of advice earned through horrible ways. Perhaps eventually it'll seep in.” He arched an eyebrow at her from beyond his long leg, still sardonic. “Look, come back to me after you dump a major metropolis upside down with what you've got to work with. We'll compare notes. If you can't wrangle at least five hundred million dollars worth of property damage in an hour, you're a damned lightweight.”

She kept staring at him, realizing in a crappy, backwards way he really did understand something about what she was dealing with. That he was reaching out of his comfort zone, and doing it willingly. “This is kinda messed up, huh?” She got another one of his familiar, creepy-thin grins. It was _almost_ comforting in a wonky way that became genuinely comforting. That tickled the rest of an instinct. “So, no, really. Why are you up, too? I'd think you'd just hole away and read after your road-trip rather than watch flicks that remind you of dead people.”

Loki looked at the table, reaching out to shove at the heavy cardboard case with a finger. “Reading would distract my focus. I can look at this and think.”

“And? Something's got you, too. You're all weirdly extroverted here. You don't talk this much unless you're trying to pull one over on someone, and you're not doing that.” She grinned, wry. “Least I don't think.”

He pursed his lips. “It's pointless.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the woman still watching him. He continued grudgingly, using his elbows to pull himself a few inches upright. “I think that Stutgart man might have wanted to walk away. That's why he burned his envelope. A symbolic act. He wanted – chose - to be a teacher, to stay with the little ones he taught. The few things he left, his place amidst the school hierarchy suggests as much to me.” He shook his head, thinking unwillingly of the crying girl in South Carolina. “Not that it changes anything. I suppose it adds pathos to the children's plight, those left behind. He wanted to alter his fate, and for him it simply could not be.”

Skye looked at the TV, getting it. The guy was always on the edge of being permanently screwed up, but he wasn't a pure sociopath. Phil was dead certain about that much. If Loki was right, that was the exact sort of thing he, of all people, would be empathetic about. She lifted both her brows almost to her hairline. “Well, crap.”

“Succinctly.”

She shoved a hand through her hair while they sat in silence for a while. She still didn't feel tired enough to sleep but, weirdly, she felt a little better. “You got, what, like another forty minutes on this flick?”

“Mmm. Might just watch the next after.”

“It's super-depressing, either version.”

“Perfect.” He reached for the remote.

“You want popcorn?”

He paused in mid-reach, considering that particular human treat with a lifted eyebrow. “Yes.”

“It's extra butter or nothing, I'm just gonna warn you.” He flapped a hand by way of response, drawing a tired but real laugh as she hoisted herself up from the couch.

. . .

_“You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fu-”_ The metal popcorn bowl rattled a handful of hot, unpopped kernels at the bottom as Skye reached out to adjust the volume just a notch higher. Ellen Ripley finished wearily dressing down the greasy Weyland-Yutani peon. _“-ing each other over for a goddamn percentage.”_

“Are there things as weird as these aliens out in space?”

“Absolutely.” Loki reached out for the bowl, his voice perfectly deadpan. “You don't want to know. Makes this look like those twee animated hellscapes you keep forcing on me. Half of Asgard's people can just pop the backs of the heads off like grotesque bone helmets, revealing the impossible, eldritch horror within. Slime and tentacles.”

“Oh my God, I can't tell if you're joking.” She watched the pale hand take a handful of popcorn before passing it back.

“Could be a documentary, all this. Rivers of acid all through the universe. Don't visit, it's dreadful. Stay on tiny, dull, backwards Earth.”

She almost inhaled a corn hull. “Nope. You're joking.”

“You'll never be able to tell for certain.” He deftly tossed a kernel in his mouth, watching the slimeball get shoved around by a thinned-out squad of Space Marines and the pissed off Ripley just before the lights went out in the fictional facility. “Gods, I loathe that little company man and his disgusting hair. That Burke. I hope he gets killed soon.”

“No spoilers.” Skye twisted her mouth, unhappily realizing something familiar about the way Loki fixated his dislike on that specific character. “So... hey. Since we're, like, bonding here, I'm gonna skip a surprise you're supposed to get tomorrow at a formal briefing.”

He reached out for the bowl again, not saying anything.

“Like, this was my idea, and I'm really sorry.” Loki was still grabbing popcorn, but the narrowed green eyes were studying her instead of the frantic space marines. She cringed. “We're sending you out to California to talk to Ian Quinn. On the bright side, you can scare the crap out of him?”

He pointed at the screen with the hand that just came from the bowl, nearly dropping a few kernels across the carpeted floor. His voice was full of terse command. “Tell me. _Does_ that Burke character die?”

“Real soon.”

“ _Good._ ” Then he paused the film again and stood up in a quick, aggravated motion, tossing a kernel in his mouth and swallowing before speaking. “Now I'm getting a beer. You can tell me _why_ I have to go suffer the presence of that walking oil slick tomorrow, as you intended.” He glanced at her. “Any other bad news I ought know?”

“Besides the fact that you're not gonna get a kill order on him?”

Loki rolled his eyes. “I can't hardly expect _that_ much of a gift.” The green stare fixed on her again. “But he can be terrified.”

“Yeah, totally. If you need. Have fun with that part.”

He looked away, clearly annoyed, but at least he didn't look furious with her. The guy's moods could still be mercurial as hell, but since moving in, he never really lashed out directly at anyone. Skye relaxed again, balancing the bowl on her knees. She managed to not tumble it when he spoke one more time, still grumbling. “It's business, I suppose. Am I bringing another for you?”

“If you don't mind.” She threw in another peace offering. “You'll like how Burke dies. It's appropriate.”

“Gods. I look forward to it. At least _someone_ gets a happy ending around here.”


	11. Casual Reunion

_San Jose, California_

Ian Quinn absently smoothed the silk napkin on his lap, admiring how the afternoon light struck the stem of his wine-glass – an angular cut, elegant, not too chintzy. A little out of date, but in Silicon Valley, where 'out of date' could be as recent as yesterday morning before the bells rang at Wall Street, it added a taste of grounding permanence. He tinked his fingernail against it, enjoying a moment of serenity in a life that had basically gone to hell ever since Cybertek took a dive off the stock market and out of all the good graces he'd ever negotiated.

The sound of a honking car outside on the street drew his attention, jarring his private state of mind and making him frown. He noticed a few extra people on the street but didn't think too much of it. These days, being the 'small fry' wasn't the worst thing that could happen in his life. The idea that he might be drawing attention was a joke. Without Raina controlling the PR scene for him, not even the Hand really cared who he was anymore.

Raina.

Hell.

A shadow passed over him as he squinted at activity in the office building across the street from the fine Italian restaurant Ian was in, the figure that shadow belonged to sliding easily into the table's paired chair while Ian wondered where his old friend or fiend was now. He sighed as he realized he'd been joined, and the sound gurgled into a soft death at the back of his throat as he turned and recognized the features of the guy now seated at his table. A man who once sleazed amiably up to him at a Mumbai tech conference in order to get into some of Roxxon's private offices, on then-Agent Phil Coulson's orders.

“Oh, Quinn,” said the man that was no human in a pleasantly broad Midwestern accent, his face looking more soft and empathetic than Ian knew it really was. “How was that tech con in Paris? I couldn't make it, I'm afraid.”

. . .

Loki's glittery green eyes left Ian Quinn's wide, staring gaze as the waitress approached, letting his features change smoothly from 'Lucas Bellwether's' more approachable human ones back into his sharper own. He kept his voice low and pleasant and distinctly American, knowing that the incongruousness of that little detail would keep the man unbalanced. “You have a choice. Scream or try to alert the waitress when she arrives, and I will tear you apart instantly and paint the walls with what remains. Or, you can share a glass of wine with me... and talk.”

“It's too early for wine,” whispered Ian, not willing to argue that the choice he was given wasn't much of one. It wasn't actually too early for wine, but his mouth had gone dry and it was the only thing he could think of to say. The waitress arrived at the table with a black folder in her hands, beaming in an easy welcome. If she'd said something to either of them, Ian missed it completely.

“Sangria, then!” said Loki, smiling charmingly for the waitress. “Excellent timing, Miss. We'll share a pitcher of that, if you please.”

“Absolutely, sir. Would you like something to start?”

“I noted you have a fine pate on special for lunch. That sounds lovely. With the toast points?” He handed the black folder back to the waitress and turned that fine, brilliantly urbane smile back on Quinn, who felt acid flow along his throat like he was about to throw up. Quinn watched the waitress leave, wondering if there was still some other way out.

He caught Loki still smiling at him when he turned back. There was something sharp and unpleasant in that smile now, something brittle at the corners. The hint of fangs behind the thin lips. “You could run, but there are a dozen SHIELD agents surrounding this quiet eatery. They'll just break your legs and toss you back into a locked room with _me._ ”

“They must be desperate, huh?” Ian mumbled his first weak shot at fighting back from the startled numbness that froze him in place. He glanced out the window, wondering which pedestrian was actually watching him, which car held a watching agent. Or if it was a bluff. No, the alien wouldn't bother with that. Not with a tiny target like himself. He swallowed. “Letting _you_ work with 'em again.”

“ _Pragmatic,_ please. Let's not be insulting.” A pitcher appeared on the table, first filling both their wine glasses. The waitress disappeared again like a whisper. His voice became obscenely cheerful. “Rather good service here.”

“They do alright.” Quinn cleared his throat, watching the alien delicately pick up the glass to sip at the sangria. The normalcy of that act made his vision whirl for a second. Jesus, he never wanted to be this close to this guy again in his life. “What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“Okay. You said that.” He managed a slow inhale. No, he was still internally wound up. He went for self-deprecating sarcasm, hoping that might buy him an even floor to stand on. “What, you want to talk about how to go from being a billionaire to floating credit cards just to get groceries?”

The green eyes flickered across him, bored. “Tell me of Roxxon's games. How they play.”

That drew a startled little laugh out of Quinn. “Woo, there's the best of Earth's entertainment. I got nothing to give you on that. I'm out, _Lucas._ When your buddies kicked back at Hydra's teeth, Roxxon gave up on me. They had a stake in Cybertek, yeah. I used to golf with some of their guys. Yeah, in Dubai, even. But when we dried up, they folded what they had of my team into their own Brand division. They don't call.”

Loki scoffed. “You're far sleazier than that. If they did call you and offered to clear your debts, you'd go a-running. For all intents, you're still in. Just... a little spat with the family. A temporary setback.”

Quinn shook his head, still trying to think. “You don't mess with Roxxon. Especially not these days. Look, whatever you need, it's probably recent. If it's recent, I can't help you. Even if I could help you, why would I?”

“I would imagine having threatened you with a painful demise would be a hint to that answer. It's not as if they sent someone kindly natured to this table to woo you. I give only promises of pain.” Loki saluted him with his wineglass, taking another sip. “Ah,” he said, smiling up at the waitress as the appetizer arrived. She smiled back on instinct. “Thank you.”

Quinn suppressed a shudder.

“You seem _concerned_ by your old allies. What do you mean, you don't _mess_ with them? They're a corporation.” The man sniffed in disdain.

If he talked, maybe he could leave. If SHIELD was really outside, they'd play fair with him. Coulson liked being fair. He took the shot and opened his mouth. _Anything_ to get away. “Wave of the future. Corporations keep getting their way worldwide, political boundaries get more and more meaningless. Corporations are the ones with the power and the money now, and Roxxon bought onto that casino table early.”

“Yes, through Hydra.” Loki leaned back against the chair, smoothing the fine dark green tie he wore underneath his suit jacket with a single hand.

“Long ago, yeah. Hydra's a relic of the old world wars. They still think geopolitically, they just think they're more than that. Give 'em another decade or two and it won't be anything your friends will do that ends them. They're dinosaurs. If they want to keep evolving and surviving they'll completely leave aside the cool uniforms and the stupid salute and fully admit that running the world doesn't need an evil mastermind. It just needs a good accounting team and the banks under your thumb. Yeah, they're close to understanding that. Some of Hydra's guys are playing the game alright. But at this rate? Too slow to change. They'll get taken into Roxxon, not the other way around.”

“See, now, that's useful.” The alien flicked a fingernail at him. “They think the world's boundaries are theirs to shear. To commodify.”

“That they do. Good enough? Can I go?”

“All the world, then.” A pale hand reached out to take a toast point and the slender knife that arrived with the pate. “Even Latveria?” Loki's gaze flickered up to Ian's face to watch the blood drain out of it again. “Well, _there's_ a dramatic reaction. Watch yourself.” He placed the prepared toast point on the tiny porcelain plate by Ian's hand, smiling lightly enough to recall fangs once more.

Ian shot a look around at the restaurant, careful and newly alert. He leaned across the table slightly, his startled expression showing that he was less thrown by the implied threat than by what Loki actually said. “Are you just pushing on me with dropping a name like that or is there something else going on?”

Loki arched an eyebrow by way of response.

“Like, why are you bringing up _that_ place?” Quinn felt himself scanning the room again, paranoia creeping up the back of his neck to prickle at his hair. “Jesus, you don't think Roxxon is...” His voice trailed off as Loki kept studying him.

. . .

May glanced down at the tablet readouts, the ones that could monitor heart-rate and body temperature. Down the other end of the phone line was Skye watching the same thing from a field van, the young woman humming under her breath. “You see that?”

_“Actual grossed-out fear.”_ Skye cleared her throat on the other end of the line. “ _Vitals spiked._ _How's he look?”_

“Greenish. Could be the binoculars I'm using.”

Natasha stirred next to her, lifting an eyebrow. “No, he's definitely a light green. Friendly chit-chats with that guy seem to have a consistent observable effect.”

The monitoring equipment recorded the silhouette of Ian Quinn as he shifted back in his seat. _“Okay, look. Roxxon goes through new CEOs every few years ever since Donald Roxxon stepped down in the seventies. Some snazzy public face. Technically not a big deal, it's mostly board run anyway. I've seen 'em, they're creepy. Anyway, Don got exhausted with dealing with the gas crisis. Or was about to get slapped with a federal RICO, depends on who you ask. The original family was always hard-edged and cutthroat, yeah. Never nice. They got that way maybe during all the shortages during the big war, plus trying to compete with old Howard Stark. But they were business. The new guy, though, the one they leave at the front while the Board does all the big deals behind the scenes. Agger. Dario Agger. He's a pure sociopath.”_

The tablet gave a soft beep as the name started crosschecking through their systems. As basic data filled the screen, Quinn kept talking. _“He came by Cybertek not long after his 'coronation.'”_ The sarcasm came through the radio static perfectly clear. _“He liked some of our stuff, but he was not a subtle guy. Talked possible kill ratios, collateral damage margins, terror impact. Guy doesn't hide his preferences. Almost would have been happier heading up a PMC, but I don't think they're showy enough for him. I mean, corp culture tends to attract sociopaths, so he wasn't a surprise. They do books on it, y'know.”_

_“Yes, I'm rather well aware.”_

“Anyone loan him any? He might find tips.” muttered Natasha. May gave her a sideways glance.

_“Agger scares me more than_ you _do. You'll just kill me. You don't think I'm worth it to do more than just go straight for a death threat. Probably infuriates the crap out of you to waste time with me. Agger would go slow. He'd act like he's got all the time in the world just to strip me. So, level. Just this one thing, don't think I'm trying to play quid pro quo on you here. I'm not that frigging backwards.”_

Natasha lowered the binoculars. “I don't know this twerp. Is he?”

“Yep.” May smirked down at the wide street-view window of the restaurant. “But maybe just barely smart enough to not push it right now.”

_. . ._

Loki permitted a thin smile at the easy opening and let it go.

Quinn's face twitched while he watched the other man's expression. “So is that a ploy, or are you friggin' serious? They're pushing on Latveria?”

“You're absolutely right, Quinn. I would simply kill you.” Loki's smile stretched into the hanging grin of a feral jackal, enjoying the way the human recoiled away from it. He let his face relax, his voice off-handed. “Oh, this other thing? Yes, that's true, too.” He watched Quinn give in and pick up his glass of sangria, downing it in a near-chug. The hand shook.

“Oh, god.” He set the glass down again. With a glance around the room himself, Loki lifted the pitcher of sangria to refill it. An expression almost like gratitude flitted across Quinn's face and he picked up the glass again. “I don't know what you've got. Please don't tell me.” He finished that glass, too, then lifted a finger. “I'm gonna tell you an anecdote real quick, which any given day I think is either terrifying or total crap, and then I'm gonna sell out and give you what little I can. This story, that's why I'll tell you. You, the literal friggin' devil come to Earth to kick our ass for our sins.”

Loki let that slide, finding some private amusement in the insult. Instead he lifted a hand with languid slowness, indicating to him to get on with it.

“Four years ago, some guy shows up in western Europe and starts making direct phone calls to some of the biggest microchip manufacturers on the planet. He tells each of them he's got this envelope. If they buy it at the price he sets – the number in the story varies depends on who I hear it from, all of them are huge – they're gonna not only recoup the investment, but position themselves for a place on top of the scrapheap for a real long time. Everyone laughs, roll snare drums.”

Loki settled back in his chair, watching the human think his way through his story and noting to himself that it seemed the weasel was not actively lying today. _More's the pity_ , he thought. It gave him no further excuses to overtly terrify the human. He allowed a brief memory of watching a sleekly black alien monster destroy a single odious human and found comfort in it. “And yet.”

“And yet, okay, someone does buy it. I won't name the company, but I know even you'd recognize it. Easy to figure it out from this, because a few months later they come busting out with this huge press release about a new processor. Blazing fast, wildest thing on the planet. It's still not mass produced for the open market today, but it's changed the game. The people that are using it are on an unfair advantage. Wall Street transaction speeds are off the chain now. It's rough out there for anyone that can't race and everyone's trying to buy in a piece of the action just to catch up. So, the guy at the head of the project for this big name company, they cover it up publicly, but the tech people like me get the word.” Quinn rubbed a hand across his forehead. “He hugged his wife goodbye one morning and left a note she didn't find till later. Instead of going to work, he drove to a church. Spent an hour with a priest.”

He dropped his elbows on the table, staring at Loki. “The nuns or whatever find him in a pew next day with a rosary, a mouth full of froth, and the bottle of pills he'd been chewing. The note he left only has two lines in it: _“I sold my soul to something worse than an unknown Hell. I sold my soul to Doom.”_

Loki arched a single black eyebrow, choosing to not say anything about the florid tale. Whether some facile urban legend or no, it was getting him what he came for.

“Look, it doesn't matter if you believe the story. People do. If Latveria is getting pushed, it's _all_ Agger's baby. Nobody else has the balls. So he'll play it close. You want to look in his orbit. Don't screw around with the small fry; he's got enough ego to be handsy. He's also not stupid enough to lock it all in his own office. But his personal workshops? Yeah, maybe some of it.” Quinn looked away, thinking. “Probably not all of it.”

“Where's his lair?”

“L.A. He likes the Hollywood scene, showy asshole.” The face swiveled back to meet Loki's, instinctively shuddering. “The tech toys he likes best are probably in a industrial complex just barely downtown off Alameda.” And now the human managed a slight, slimy grin. “That's gonna be a Brand building. They run all of the tech side lately.”

“Give me more than that.” Loki's voice turned sardonic. “Be a patriot, Quinn.”

Quinn responded with a disgusted noise. “God. Your guys stole what you could of our stuff ages ago. You got our key cards, you got our IDs. IT of any major organization is only as efficient as they gotta be unless you hound the crap out of them. You can use what you took to get into Brand pretty easy if you can communicate with their network and latch in. It's still all our tech. They just repurposed it, barely changed the locks. So to speak.”

“You're certain your key cards would work? If they were found to be... troublesome...” He let his words trail off, his feral expression finishing the threat for him.

A little of the cocky arrogance came back to Quinn, the relaxation born of a single topic where he knew his own worth. “I rigged a bunch of them myself. I do stuff like that sometimes just to remind me of what I can make. Yeah, I'm not Stark. But I can build my own toys just fine, and when I do, there's always backdoors. They'll get your people in if you look for that.” Quinn pulled the pitcher towards him. “Now, let's both hope you never talk to me again.”

“Oh, I'll drink to _that.”_ One more nasty smile, just for show. It made him happy to watch Quinn shudder slightly at the sight of it.


	12. Spies Like Us

Natasha Romanoff kept an eye on the high camera swiveling in the corner above the warehouse door, knowing that knocking the electronic eye out even temporarily would bring more attention than simply ghosting through it. “Three seconds,” she whispered into the throat mic once she finished calculating its arc and range of vision, her words meant for Agent May who was leapfrogging along the path behind her. “Move. Now.”

A single tonal sound was the response signal. As May moved unseen, Natasha slipped through the unlocked door and quickly scanned the new hallway for anything, any hint of a threat – shadows, sound, light, the creak of motion. There was nothing. Silently pleased, she kept moving, smoothly stalking up the hall and checking corners, her ears covering her own flank and finding only the distant rustle of May catching up. Night shift change at the warehouse had been targeted to take place between two and two thirty in the morning. Rolling through the brief window of distraction and charging as far in as they'd gotten so far was the sign of a currently successful plan, nothing to be proud about yet. The trick was staying successful and getting out clean and without detection. Then she would be content.

Her instincts lit up, sensing the approach in the way sound muted in the hall. May was behind her now, checking out the other end of the hall. From here, they could use hand signals. She glanced back to see her friend lift one hand in an empty, broad-palmed gesture. _Clear._ May looked back to meet her eyes, tilting her head. _Which way?_

Natasha looked at the ceiling, seeing the way the wires were strapped along the corners of the wall. She looked around the corner to see if they were coming or going, and if there were more of them. There were, down and to the left. She gestured to May to follow her. _Left,_ she signaled.

May glanced up as she pulled alongside and saw what the spy did, nodding. She crouched. _Gonna be a guard soon,_ she mouthed. _Desk?_

_Full office,_ Natasha mouthed back _._ One of the wire bundles above was thick and dark, banded with red. She recognized it as a common internal security network line, though usually non-civilian targets didn't leave the wires out for intruders to see. Usual package included the wiring for an intercom system and something to rig for a full security checkpoint. Half the time, nothing was hooked up right. Beneficial to her line of work. This looked like it was going to be the good half.

_Lock 'em in with a glitch?_

Natasha shrugged. Yeah, maybe. Or... She flickered her gaze up at the wiring again. Multiple birds with one handy rock. Now a tiny smile filled her face. _Draw them off,_ she mouthed. It would be more efficient, and possibly get patrollers away for a longer period of time while they searched the secure parts of the Brand warehouse beyond.

. . .

Natasha looked down at the sleeping back of the guard. Mimicking a request through the security line got the results she wanted, three other guards wandering off from the tiny office on a 'routine patrol.' It seemed like things were even easier than that. She rummaged through a compartment on her belt and came up with the tiny needle. It probably wasn't necessary, but hey. She'd been in the business too long to rely on likelihoods alone. She slipped the butterfly needle painlessly into the back of the guard's hand and juiced him up with the sedative. Two hours later, it would be totally gone from his system. Meanwhile, he'd just sleep hard enough to be complained at by his bosses for days. She looked up at May. “Been too long since I've done a civilian job,” she whispered. “Used to it being a lot harder.”

May smirked as she pulled her phone away from the security terminal. She wound the connecting cable up and put it away in her pocket. While Nat made sure the sleeper stayed out, she made sure they had copies of all the electronic 'keys' they might need. Quinn's cards got them in this far, but like Natasha, she was big on planning through contingencies herself. She kept her own voice just as quiet. “Maybe you're just better at it than ever.”

“Flattery gets me everywhere.” Natasha checked her gear again with quick, instinctive gestures. Then she pushed the man's half-full mug of cold coffee back two inches to where it was before she'd needed to move his hand. “Got a path?”

“Nexus of automated high-security tech coming up real soon here. Key I grabbed for that checkpoint is a dupe of Agger's.”

“Sounds good to me. Can you run interference on the monitoring stuff from here, or are we doing it old fashioned when we get close?”

“Doesn't run from here. We need to approach.” May stuffed her phone in her pocket. “Skye's still linked in, should be able to disable once we're in range.”

  _. . ._

Skye yawned up at Loki as he loomed over her in the observation van several blocks away from the warehouse. “Place looks like a maze in there.” She tapped the screen as it filled with data from the signals the two agents' phones were sending out to her. “There's probably a joke in that somewhere.”

“ _Probably_?” Loki sighed, looking over the biographical brief of the current Roxxon CEO. “The only question is if this Agger creature is deliberate enough about his reputation to do it on purpose.” He scrolled back to the top, selecting the hyperlink tied to Agger's nickname.

“Yeah, what was the deal with his rep again?”

“Certain of his employees refer to him as ' _the Minotaur._ ' Not quite certain why, beyond standard hostility and intimidation tactics. Although he seems certainly devoted to those.” He skimmed the attached file, reading the overview of almost a half dozen seemingly buried charges of physical assault against Agger's own employees. An additional note remarked clinically that four of those whistleblowers were now dead.

Skye snapped her fingers. “That's why I'm thinking of mazes.” She looked back down at her tracking information, not realizing the intensity of the stare she was getting. “Yes, duh. Look, I'm distracted. They got some big dealie stuff in there and I gotta bypass it as soon as they get close.” She checked some schematics from a military security company that she'd just pulled off a server that used to be secure. _Well, that's what you get for having your 'secure code' on a system attached to the internet,_ she thought to herself, changing a handful of inputs on the fly to better suit what she needed. “Would have been easier to cheat and send you in there to fry the place a little.”

“I'm not a skeleton key. There's value in your own careful subtlety.”

“Also you're just the tiniest bit nervous about Natasha being around and would probably do anything to not wind up in a warehouse virtually alone with her in the dead of night on the off chance she'd come up with some way to actually kill you. Despite the whole durable alien demigod shtick.” He made sure she could feelthe stare that time. She didn't bother to look up. “Dude, it's totally obvious. She's not gonna try.”

“Well, not while any of you lot are _watching._ ”

“House rules, dude. You don't drop your coworkers while on the clock.”

“She'll wait until I'm sleeping, comes to that,” he muttered, not feeling particularly soothed. “Far more tactical. A better advantage over me, find a moment of exposure in which I might not be able to withstand her attack. Further, I _highly_ doubt she regards me as any sort of compatriot. I will not warrant that protection.” He sighed and looked away, tapping the tablet against the back of Skye's seat.

“What the hell did you do to her? I'm assuming this was during your internationally famous 'hey, look at me, I'm a total diva jerkface with really evil-looking hair' phase, so it's not like I'm gonna be surprised.”

“I was rude.”

“We call that Tuesday. By the way, your hair still looks kinda evil. I got a travel bottle of shampoo in my bag, good for oily.”

“ _Particularly_ rude.” He ignored the teasing jab about his hair. It occurred to him to wonder which Romanoff hated him for worse – his vulgarly dramatic finale in the glass cage, or his intense series of threats regarding her hijacked friend. Or an unpleasantly even mix of both.

It was probably both. He found himself squinting down at the datapad, his expression pained. He hadn't quite won his battle against her, but he'd managed to score a cut or two. At the time, he would never have believed that the cost of that might come due. No, his new road was never going to be simple, nor completely free of old debts incurred through his acts of rage. A fresh start didn't mean the past he'd built merely disappeared. His attempts at courtesy now would not stave off her fury forever – a fury that might damage the place he'd found here, or successfully scar him in some way even Banner had not. He sighed to himself, quiet enough to be meant for his ears alone.

Skye rolled her eyes, still not bothering to look at him. “You do have a knack for that sometimes.” Something pinged on her datastream. “Okay, shut up, I gotta open some doors here.”

. . .

“You have a good team.” Natasha watched the red lights on the ultra-high security door panels go green. “Picked some kid off the street and turns out, what, she's a hacker supreme? Making her your next super agent, May?”

“We like our strays 'round Coulson's house.” May tried to not stress the plural too hard, deciding also against reminding Natasha that once upon a time she'd been a stray, too. No point in banging on about the topic. “Turns out pretty good for us.”

“Maybe so far. Gotta watch out for the duds, though.” She went quiet, using her side to push open the unlocked door silently, carefully. Her eye pressed close enough to the sliver the doorway was forming to get a look inside, yet far away to be able to duck to safety if there was trouble. There was still nothing. _Clear,_ she mouthed again, then let them both in.

Agger's private workshop was a tight space; mostly lined with crisply clean metal shelves loaded with components. May swept the room with a quick glance and found things were marked by date and a series of acronyms that probably indicated projects. “Oh, hey, he's a neat freak.”

“I love those. So much easier to rustle through. _You_ know how many targets are total slobs.” Natasha went straight to a shelf labeled for the month the first corpse missing a hunk of spine showed up, snapping open cases until she found the one she wanted. “Wow. Bet the cases are color-coordinated, too.” She plucked the mostly-intact bundle of wiring, seeing where someone – probably Agger himself – had stripped the coating off some of the wires for electronics testing. The tiny chipset itself rattled inside a shatterproof glass bottle nestled in a plastic mesh. She picked it up out of its little nest to study it.

“Yep. They are. Going for these new crates he's got, see what's attached to current projects. What's that one?”

“Mid nineties set, I think, based on the wire thickness.” She went to the next, listening to May rummage through the newest collections. “Late eighties here.” She shook her head a few moments later, after checking a few more. “Makes me worry.”

She could hear metal clink behind her. “About?”

“Nothing I can identify as recent stuff. Nothing new. Maybe they're not making new sleeper agents anymore. Maybe they don't need to.” Natasha sighed. “The last active Latverian agent I got word about was three years ago, and he was so damn old, May. No wonder he never tripped any breakers. He had to have been one of the first they sent out, and the more I see, the more I think he might've also been the final one to get jobbed.” She snapped the case she was studying shut and moved to the last of the five victims she knew about before May called her. “None of these victims did anything to draw attention. Not one of them was on our radar.”

“Latveria was moving on to something else, let 'em lay low long enough that they built totally ordinary lives.”

“How very Soviet of 'em. That doesn't comfort me, though. We've got enough drone tech on the civilian level here. Who knows what they're playing with now.” Natasha shook her head. “Even without gods and gifted and everything else, the world sometimes feels like it's changing too fast for spies like us.”

“We're keeping up.” May shrugged, finding nothing in the first two crates and moving to the last one. “There's no changing the need or the adaptability of the human element in what we do, Nat. You know that better than anybody.” The cheer left her voice as she opened the crate.

Natasha turned around, sensing the change instantly. “What did you find?”

Instead of answering, May looked up at her, face tight. “We're about to get played. They really didn't like someone coming in on their turf.” She pulled the crate out and shoved the lid further back to show the spy the contents.

Natasha's expression smoothed over into cold, calculating consideration at the sight of the various cards, scraps of metal, and torn patches. Each of the patches held the familiar stylized black eagle against a white background. Trophies probably torn free when Hydra lit up the scene and broke their organization apart from the inside. “Okay,” she said, dead calm and thinking fast. “This doesn't resolve our other problem, the one we came in here for.”

“Just gives us some all new ones. Who was feeding them the names of deep sleep operatives.” May snapped the crate shut, her face close to outright anger. “We're not going to get an answer to that here. Do we torch the place?”

Natasha scanned the room, eyes unfocused as her thoughts zeroed in on her next move. “Can't. We need it intact to buy time for my next idea. We light it up, they might freak and scatter.”

May stood up, shoving the crate back into position with her boot. “Probably wouldn't change the outcome on our end. It's possible this is already active. I'm sending an alert back to Coulson the second we get out of here, get the warning out on the street. What's your play?”

“We're withdrawing to the van, right now. Prep your message. Do me a favor and tell your hacker queen to find me where Agger is right now, and where he'll be for the next twenty-four.”


	13. Family Matters

Loki stayed wedged back against the front seats of the large surveillance van as Natasha Romanoff rummaged agitatedly through one of the equipment bags she'd brought along. He watched as May and Skye conferred in hushed tones, sending the bad news back to Coulson at the Playground. He could hear perfectly well what that dire development was, but chose silence as the better part of valor for the moment.

Skye swung around on the seat, draping her elbow on the headrest while she watched Natasha study something in the bottom of the bag. “I've got a trace on Agger.”

“Location?”

“Well, he's in his house right now, but tomorrow? Party.” Skye flicked a hand to indicate the direction. “Guess some director is throwing a huge shindig for some upcoming flick, supposed to be some real Oscar bait. It's _the_ Hollywood event of the season... for this week, anyway. He got an invite couple days ago, RSVP'd through all the fancy channels. Profile we got on him says he's definitely going. Got to go see and be seen, this guy. Seems like the sort to cruise the newbies, too.”

At that, a neatly folded garment bag came out, Natasha unzipping it a couple of inches to study the flowing black fabric inside. “Perfect.”

“You always pack a little black cocktail dress next to your ammo box?” Skye raised an eyebrow, realizing she was seeing probably several thousand dollars worth of silk and fine rhinestone detailing just laying around inside a heavy duty military go-bag.

“Yep.” Natasha zipped the bag back up. She nudged her other bag with her knuckles. “Shoes, too. Strappy little seasonal numbers. Don't let the heels fool you.” She managed a smirk, her brow still furrowed and tight under the tied back long hair. “I can run a marathon in 'em if I gotta.”

Skye looked up at Loki towards the front of the van and mouthed _damn_ at him _._ He looked back at her, still blank-faced in that way that usually meant he expected some sort of a fight coming his direction. She guessed she understood, Romanoff did look a little tense once she and May got back to the vehicle. She watched Natasha move a few matte black canisters around in the bag, the bottoms labeled heavily with dense technical language. “What're those?”

“Experimental mace.”

Skye had a fleeting memory of Grant Ward playing the no-personal-space game, suppressing a shudder. That guy was still out there. Creeping. “Can I have one?”

The superspy gave a soft chuckle, still rummaging. “It's touchy stuff. If you concentrate it too hard on your target, there's a non-zero chance of setting their eyeballs on fire. Or that's what the tech guy told me, anyway.”

“Can I have three?”

May watched the exchange, a little amused. She could tell who Skye was thinking about, just by the way a tight little line appeared between the younger woman's brows. She jutted her chin towards Loki, thinking of Coulson's early advice. “What's your read on this so far?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Natasha pause with her fingers knotting tight against the bag. A flicker of Loki's gaze meant he saw it, too. May lifted her eyebrow at him, functionally a command to get talking.

He looked uncomfortable but did. “The only things of value you found in there were tools to incriminate SHIELD and the various kits pulled from the dead. No other Latverian artifacts that you could identify.”

“No. Nothing.” May leaned back against her seat. Natasha still looked tense, but she was clearly listening.

“The paranoid value of that alone is remarkable. Latveria must keep a tight watch on their toys; all that can be stolen is from the cast aside bodies of their own servants. Yet there's your conundrum; silent spies with nary a whisper to track. If we did not know them, who did?” He allowed a light shrug, careful to not make it look flippant. “The answer is obvious. Latveria itself. I tell you nothing you did not observe. The real question is _why._ ”

Natasha leaned back on her heels, studying him. Her voice remained barely grudging. “Yeah. I listened to your friend Quinn's story about the tech deal. It's not out bounds for them to play with people's heads. But this isn't another show. The last three were a firebreak, you said. Latveria's still reacting like they're getting attacked, pulling their guys out of the game one way or another.”

“ _Friend_.” He cleared his throat, looking out the window of the van as an early morning pedestrian strolled by without a glance. “Yes. Any strong leadership must keep close those things of value. Careful, tight borders have value. Sleeping spies have value. Active spies are a hedged bet, when they're put into play the spymaster knows to count that cost paid and gone till they come home safe. That game you've seen. You live it. And they killed their own, yes, but they did so _mercifully._ They would never sell their waiting spies to a foreign world for a laugh. That's a priceless resource – even outdated, as you suggest, an old knife kills just as well as a shining one.”

May nodded, following along. By Natasha's grim expression, his words were matching suspicions of her own. “Yeah. Maybe not everything is family and bliss in Latveria.”

“I'd wager whoever sold their own country's agents just might be clever enough to put the notion of blaming _us_ into Agger's ear to cover their own treachery. It's not like SHIELD hasn't played their games before. They know the name. Yes, we've walked into more than a mixture of murderous, greedy agents. There's four strings to this knot – us, Agger, Latveria, and some other agent of chaos within. We've walked into what may be the start of a coup of some kind, some... revolution to be built upon. The true question is raised by the discovery of this new ruse – does Latveria's leadership suspect? Or will they bite the bait and lash at _us_?”

“And that's why I'm going to this party.” Natasha shook her head. “Going to see what I can lift off Agger directly. We need to find out who's playing the fiddle here – I've got a suspicion, really the only reasonable one, but we _have_ to be able to prove it. Chase it down, somehow.”

Loki watched her tug a small device from the bag, pocketing it. “What suspicion?”

Another of those heavy pauses before she said anything. When she spoke, her voice was purely professional. “I'm going to play that close for a few. Want to know if I'm just jumping to the obvious, or if this does go back to some of the last old rumors we got.” She zipped the bag shut, looking over at May. “I need a nap before the party. We got a safehouse close?”

“We do. You sure you want to do this, Nat? We called you in to consult on what you knew of Latveria, and while God knows I never refuse a chance to shake down a place with you, this is still our problem. I can get someone in there almost as easily.”

Natasha rested her hands on her knelt legs, stretching her arms up while she shook her head. The tension was still on her face, mixing with something ferocious. “I want to do this. SHIELD's gotten exposed enough, gotten our ass stuck out to the wind plenty.” She stood up and crossed her arms, leaning against the side of the van to study her friend. “I couldn't stop Hydra from tearing us up from the inside. None of us could. Not alone, not together. We did everything possible, but we couldn't stop the flood.” She sighed. “I'm stopping this one. We've eaten enough punches for a while.”

May looked away. If Natasha took something personal, there was little swaying her from doing something about it. One way or another. She resisted an urge to flicker a glance at Loki, knowing full well things weren't paid off there, either. “Not a lot of lead-up here. You might get nailed coming out of this one.”

“Me? Never, May.” Natasha snorted. “A lady always has an open door.”

Loki cleared his throat. “Before we break for what remains of the night, I have one of those distressing, unwanted questions everyone just loves.”

“That's a thing with him?” Natasha looked at May. “Is that seriously a thing?”

“It's a thing.” May gestured to Loki. “Drop the other shoe.”

“Say we find results. We name our antagonist and can thus press our cause and keep what's been regathered of SHIELD's good name. But we do not know who truly runs Latveria. We know nothing of their internal matters.” He gave them one of his thin, ugly smiles. “What if the one content to drag us and possibly the rest of the world entire through Latveria's rage for their purpose is yet the better ally than what sits hidden inside those closed borders?”

“I hate when he does that.” May rubbed a hand across her forehead, hard. Skye grimaced.

“It's just a variant of 'devil-you-know.'” Natasha shrugged, accepting the dire theory with hard-taught Russian stoicism. “That's not an easy call, and one that goes higher up the food chain.”

Loki arched an eyebrow. “So that's the response? Keep to our path and let someone else worry about the possible outcome? It's all above our pay-grade?”

Natasha snapped him a sharp, hard look. “It's more complicated than that.”

“Is it?”

She shot back. “We don't know what we're in the middle of, so, yes.”

May raised a hand, sensing the start of a possible fight. “You're both starting from a good point, okay? It's not an easy situation from either angle, Loki, don't try to drill it down like that. Here's the deal – Latveria's been a sleeping giant. While we don't have a lot to go on, it's generally agreed that we're happier with them ignoring the rest of the world. At least for now. If they wake up and get us in their sights, we don't know what'll happen. Sure as hell we can't make that call from this van. So we get all the information we can, then we cut in everyone we need, and we make a decision based on that.” She rubbed at the back of her neck, feeling the headache start. A nap was definitely the next step. “In a situation like this, it's extremely possible that _no_ decision is going to be one hundred percent right. You should be familiar with that. Nothing is easy.”

Loki was the one to look away, accepting that silently. May felt the tension in the air ratchet down again, some of the tightness in her neck easing off. “I'm gonna get the van started. We all need some downtime here.”

. . .

_Stabek, a suburb of Oslo, Norway_

Canavan yawned, his partner matching it a second later. “I hate schedule shifts.” He scratched at his upper arm under the sleeve of the plain black t-shirt he wore. The artist and the doctor both told him there was simply no way the removed SHIELD eagle tat could still be itchy, but he swore it lit up every time the temperature in the area around him dipped below freezing. He was still pissed about having to get it lasered off in the first place. He was a long-timer, a career loyalist. When they called out to see who was still standing, he'd shouted back at the top of his lungs. “Friggin' Hydra,” he mumbled, apropos of nothing. Well, at least SHIELD learned one thing from all that – cut  _their_ head off, they were just going to come back bigger and badder. Coulson was good people. That was a change he'd been alright with.

“Random. But I hear that. You want some coffee?” His partner, Eggleston, hoisted himself up out of the kitchen chair to do a systemic check out the windows of the long-running safehouse. Their little corner of the world, leaving the light on for the few agents still out on the road. There were new ones every day, but not like it was. Not yet.

“Yeah. What's the bleat off the official lines?”

“Mostly usual crap.” Eggleston grinned at him, playing dramatic. Canavan slumped against the doorframe, staring at him until he got on with it. “There's been a scrape for some intel; anyone with information on high level Roxxon, or, get this... Latveria.”

Canavan laughed. “Man. That's gotta just be a routine call. See who's paying attention.”

“Yeah, I guess. They put out a notice to ratchet up the general alert, though. Someone's being paranoid.” Eggleston frowned down at the street. “Bakery delivery guy is running late. I want my frickin' breakfast.”

“Maybe he had to park around the corner.”

“Yeah maybe.” Eggleston swiveled his head at the scratch at the front door of the small safehouse. “Guess you're right.”

Still, training took over. Both of them checked their holsters, with Agent Canavan sliding into basic cover behind the door, with a clear view of his buddy. Eggleston called out a cheery good morning in touristy Norwegian, opening the door with deceptive care. His hidden hand was on his firearm. Just an ordinary morning, keeping watch over the world.

Eggleston all but disappeared a second later, the smell of something burning and a trace whiff of baking bones filling the air where he'd stood. Canavan didn't freeze, he pulled his arms up into firing position with the safety on his gun off.

Nothing came through the door, yet it swiveled open.  _Nothing._

_Wait._ Canavan's eyes narrowed when the air itself shimmered in front of him. He heard the soft clank of metal, and that was enough to warn him. He unloaded a full clip into the empty, wavering air. Where the bullets struck, he saw the split-second glint of a silvery alloy and an odd flicker of green. He could barely put a shape together from the ricochet – a wide, metal torso.  _I'm gonna get killed by a friggin' invisible Terminator!_

He snarled, enraged that he was going to go like this. And then he vanished in the same whiff of disintegration that murdered his partner.

The Latverian construct observed its handiwork with multiple integrated sensors, sending its conclusions back to its handler. It identified the ideal position between several load-bearing walls. And then it self-destructed, utterly demolishing one of SHIELD's last safe bastions in the world.


	14. Little Black Dress

“I've seen bigger,” muttered Natasha, tossing her waved and gleaming hair over her shoulder as the borrowed limo approached the sprawling Hollywood mansion. She opened her spangly, expensive-looking clutch and looked one more time at the credentials inside. She had her cover story in place. This was just killing time.

“Well, yeah,” said May, from the driver's seat. She watched the security guys standing in the street wave the line of arrivals around. “You've seen, what, like four different houses Stark owns? This guy's a small fry compared to that. What'd he direct, anyway? I fell asleep the second we hit the motel, I honestly didn't bother reading that part of Skye's brief. I got the gist she got bored just writing it.”

“Some crappily researched epic, either biblical or from that time period. I just read enough to airhead my way through a chat on the topic. Like your agent said, it's Oscar bait.” Natasha looked down at herself, ensuring that her teardrop necklace was on straight and the almost invisible comm kit she was wearing was firmly double-taped along the curve of her chest. She wiggled, making sure that it would never become visible short of a total strip show. “Someday, somebody in development is gonna invent a chest rig that doesn't poke.”

“Hear that.” May idled the limo as one of the huge security guys approached. He gave her a nod, then stepped to the window by Natasha and knocked on it once. May rolled it down and then called back on her passenger's behalf. “Yes?”

“ID and invitation, ma'am?”

Natasha gave him a beaming smile and plucked both out of her clutch, the two documents pinched between a perfect-looking manicure. The guard took them, looking longer at her than at the documents. Frankly, they could have been blank for all the guy cared – at this end of the line, he was more a bouncer looking for who else to let in for background art than a security pro. She tilted her head at him as he handed her ID back, knowing exactly how striking her red hair looked when it draped along the pricey black silk dress she wore. “All right, thank you. You have a lovely night, Miss.” The guard tipped his cap to her and waved the limo through.

“Gonna be a long evening for you, Nat.” May pulled up through the gate, watching the throng as it spilled along the rolling front lawn of the mansion.

“Seen so much worse. Is that one actor here, you think? The one that was creeping on the actresses during the last Oscars? God, I thought he was going to lick one of them.”

May knew who she was talking about; it'd been the breakout drama of social media afterward. Skye kept cracking jokes about it. “Probably.”

“Ugh. I hate the handsy ones that don't even try to play the game. I always have to remember I can't break their ribs in public.”

“I can tell.” May grinned. “You never break character, but it's like your eyebrows sharpen up. Just this little bit of tension. The guys never notice.”

“Well, yeah. I keep 'em looking elsewhere.” They shared a laugh, two long-timers readying for a variation on a familiar scene.

. . .

Natasha clutched the arm of the party attendant showing her around and squealed just loudly enough to be twee and quietly enough to not draw too much attention. “Oh my _God,_ is that Eddie Redmayne?”

It was, but that wasn't important. As her attendant swiveled his head to look, she peered behind his back to keep track of Dario Agger. He was holding forth in a corner of the pool area, surrounded by a handful of models and performers she didn't recognize. All of them had that familiar network-party plastic smile. And all of them had the body language of someone who instinctively smelled a threat behind the boxy face and the too-processed mane of hair just a shade too long to be pure business. Yeah, he was a showy guy. She beamed up at her guide as he looked down at her, seeing only the young twenty-something no-name actress. A little bit of contouring, the right choice of colors along the eyes, and just the right attitude. No one would ever guess she'd been all over C-SPAN not all that long ago, talking about SHIELD's implosion before a government panel. “I didn't see him, Miss, but probably.”

“Oh, wow.” She giggled and tossed her hair. “I never believed I'd be at the same party as him. Do you know how to introduce yourself to someone like that? I mean-”

“Sweetie, I'm sure people'll come up to you just fine.” The attendant patted the hand still clutching his arm, not actually condescendingly. The guy was clearly practiced at moving a scene around. Probably worked the business for a long time; long enough to have almost some of the same instincts as a trained spy. A nose for trouble. She smiled up into his broad face, sort of liking him. “Just be your charming fresh self. People around here love that earnestness. Let me get you situated over here.” He waved her towards a line of plush chairs set along the mansion's side deck. “If you need anything, you just ask one of Mr. Scomerone's staff.”

Natasha squeezed his arm in gratitude as she took the seat like an awkward princess. 'Natalie Scarletto' was pure bait – a pretty new girl in the L.A. scene, with an obviously fake stage name selected to play up her hair color. “I still can't believe I got invited. I mean, friend of a friend of a... yeah. But it's just wild.”

“You get used to it. The glitz fades and you learn the gig. Can still knock you around from time to time, though. That sparkle.” The guide tipped her a wink before wandering off to wrangle his next charge. “First time I saw Brad Pitt? Boy-o- _howdy._ ”

 . . .

“And we don't run proper backup for her? At all?” Loki watched the monitors despite not getting much in the way of visual from inside the shindig, setting the paperback he'd been reading down on his leg. “Is it me? Gods know, I'm sure she'd rather die than have me help contain a situation. Should one arise.”

Skye kept crunching her potato chips, scanning the automated transcripts and getting a surprising amount of overheard gossip. “Not all about you, dude. We're strictly monitor and assess on this gig. She says she's got a full plan, plus contingencies. She never bothers to register an outside extraction, never needed one. And what Romanoff says about an op usually goes. Doubly so today, since May signed off on it. Oh my god, _those two_ are together?” She mouthed the word 'wow' at the stream. “Once upon a time I could have sold that information to a paparazzo for enough money to keep my van running for a month.”

The demigod shook his head and picked his book back up with a lot more aggression than the act required. “I'm continually proven wrong. _This_ is the most boring social scenario devised by humans yet. A bunch of bards and mummers yammering at each other about how terrific it all is.”

Almost absently, she noticed an urgent email message getting uploaded to the secure network. “Yeah, but this actress is bangi-”

“ _I don't care_.”

 . . .

She was on her fifth drink - although an extraordinarily cagey observer would realize the actual count was less than one – when the vaguely familiar looking television actor with a motormouth and a fairly obvious cocaine habit walked her past Agger's little enclave. The actor was unsuccessfully chatting her up by way of pressing a sixth drink on her, which she took and then set aside on the side table before staggering slightly. She giggled. “Oops. I'm _so_ sorry.”

To Agger's point of view, all it looked like was a pretty new face with a lot of tipsy and a little leg to show. She steadied herself and met his eyes as she came up. He was openly checking her out, without any shame. She giggled again, patting at the corner of her mouth and careful to not smear her makeup. “I should probably switch to water.”

“I'll get you some,” said the actor at her side, taking the opportunity to dart off and ingratiate himself with a different offering. She took the opportunity to settle carefully, unsteadily in an open chair close to Agger. She ran a hand through her hair, noticing through the corner of her eye that Agger was still watching her. Just at the edge of her view, she could tell a couple of his buddies closed off the corner to new arrivals before her new actor friend could come back. So, Agger wasn't that subtle about what he really came to the local parties for.

“Fresh to town?” he asked.

She sniffed a little giggle. God, he was easy. “Is it that obvious?”

“You're beautiful,” he said, not bothering to be anything but forthright about it. “Give you a year and the right agent, you'll be a star.”

She flushed just the right bashful shade. “I think it takes more than beauty.”

“It gets the door open.”

“Yeah, but... oh my God, I worked so hard on the theatre circuit back home.” She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, it was a tiny thing, but... Are you an agent? Rep?” Natasha leaned back in the plush chair in the languid, easy way of someone good and moderately drunk.

“Sorry, honey. I'm just a businessman that gets to crash all the best parties.” He saluted her with the wide glass of whiskey in his hand.

“Aww. But you get to come to them?” She blinked, a little bleary. “You must know a lot of people.”

“Networking, all it is.” He grinned, showing a lot of teeth. “All right, and a little money.” He sipped his whiskey, studying her like a shark that just found an orphaned baby seal. “A lot of money.”

. . .

Drunk Natalie Scarletto didn't know any better. It wasn't about trying to buy her way in, she told him in a wavering voice, clutching the arm of his suit as he led her deeper inside the director's mansion and up to the second floor. _Just, you know... it's so lonely out here_.

The lost farmgirl, looking for one moment of friendly comfort. The classics never die.

While he pawed at the shoulder of her dress, she slipped his smartphone out of his suit pocket, palming it quickly behind her back and into a carefully layered slit pouch she'd personally stitched in. She staggered back. “Just... just one moment,” she said, wavering in place with both her hands up to waggle at him. He put out a hand on her hip to help her stay upright (and cop a 'subtle' feel of her butt), causing her to outright laugh. “I'll be right back.”

When she was locked in the attached bathroom, the routine dropped like a porcelain mask. She didn't have a lot of time – one hand turned on the water faucet while the other lifted the toilet lid with an audible clunk. Standard gig of a lady that didn't want any of her business overheard. Then she pulled the phone back out.

He used a keypad to lock the device, but he hadn't cleaned the plastic cover on the screen in a little while. She held the phone at a tilted angle, looking at the way the fingerprints smeared and calculating the odds based on his biographical data. Finding the best probability, she unlocked the phone with four swift taps and went straight to the list of contacts.

There it was – fourteen calls in the last three days, plus a long list of well-timed contacts with earlier phone numbers over the last couple months. She memorized the current number, then hesitated. Did she place a bet and go for it, or take the number out of the mansion and chase it down?

Good odds the number could be burned. Changed any hour. And time was a factor. She hit redial to see who picked up.

_“Agger?”_ The voice was low and quiet, in the deep range for a woman. Natasha stared at the phone, not certain yet. Internally, she pleaded with the woman to talk more. Almost on cue, the voice started again, rich and almost perfectly American English. Natasha's trained ears picked up the slightly sharp 'r', the blended 'th' sound of southeastern Europe. Regional traces that could include once-Hungarian territories. _“You had best not be drunk dialing me again. Our deal doesn't cover my patience with your antics.”_

She hung up on the familiar voice, her suspicion confirmed. Natasha hid the phone away, staring into the mirror and trying to find her mask again. One hand reached out to flush the toilet. Yes. The woman who'd come out of Latveria to threaten the US government just a couple years earlier. Lucia von Bardas. Only one senator had tapped his own office, and Natasha was among those who'd heard the recording of von Bardas' quiet, careful fury over the map drone. She'd sounded like a real patriot, serving in the name of her country.

Well, why not. It used to be her family's land to run. Who knew for sure what happened since. Natasha looked in the mirror again and winced before her expression smoothed back over into that of the sweet young thing in a big wide world. Loki's unpleasant theory had a legitimate hook to it.

_Loki's._ The reflexive disgust made her careful mask waver before she swallowed it down again.

She exhaled a long, drawn out sigh, and went back to finish the game.

. . .

Getting the phone back into his pocket was easy, a few quick gestures while Agger kept trying to paw at the wobbly drunk girl and her artful attempts to keep her dress on. A good thing, because it rang less than a minute later. Natasha's instincts called it instantly as she pushed herself back towards the edge of the bed – von Bardas wanting to see if she'd gotten butt-dialed by her partner in corruption or what. Agger pulled away from Natasha at the audible agitation in the woman's voice, the spy taking it as her cue to start looking for the exit.

Whether she had to signal one for herself or not.

“No, I didn't call you. I don't- maybe there was a glitch.” Agger immediately turned and started eyeballing her. She smiled up at him. “You hear anything?”

_Yeah, running water._ Natasha kept beaming drunkenly just before she stood up and started walking towards the door. Not dropping character yet, just playing around with a half-stagger, half dance. “Daaaario...” she sing-songed at him. “Come on. Get off the phone, that's all anyone does in this city, play on their _phooone_.”

No good, he was studying her. She blinked at him, rubbing a hand up the side of her face. There were going to be three of his people just outside the door. She'd watched them follow their boss up, gauging them through the fall of her hair. Easy drops. Still. She preferred to get out of the mansion without causing a big scene. But a little one? No problem.

That was going to mean she needed a clean way off of the second floor. Three windows in the hall beyond, two with a clear shot of the door she was going to come through. Easy enough. All well within plans she'd previously arranged.

She gave Agger one more innocently drunken giggle as he lowered the phone to stare at her, then flung the door open with a firm and steady hand. Without pausing, she swept the leg out from under one of the guards, the one closest to her. Her right arm snapped out and curled around the neck of the shortest of the three while the first one crumpled to the ground with a startled yelp. With the momentum from the swipe giving her an extra push, she tugged the second guard down, beginning her spin. The third barely started to move. Behind her, she could hear Agger start to yell.

_Now would be good._

A hole suddenly appeared in the window between her and the third guard. The cracking edges on the window drew his attention, pausing him, keeping him in perfect position while she spun – no easy stunt in a silky black dress – and used all her body weight and leg strength to yank him down with the force in her legs. She heard the smack of the back of his skull against the floor.

The first guard tried to move again. She grabbed him along the forehead and bounced his skull once. The second tried to crawl away, dazed, before giving up and falling over. And with that, all three were out in under four seconds. She stared inside the bedroom from where she temporarily knelt, her body still in a go-posture.

Inside the room, Agger coughed and dropped to his knees. No way he was joining the fight. The trick arrow was one of Barton's very special ones; it was intended to completely disintegrate after a target contact, leaving no evidence for anyone to trace. Agger was going to conk out hard for half an hour at best, the largest dose the tiny vial attached to the arrow could carry.

_Thank you, Clint._ She beamed a genuine smile out the window, followed by a wink. A glint of light flickered back before a darker shadow against the black slipped out of a tall tree's nest – _You're welcome, Natasha._

Then she glided downstairs through the unsuspecting crowd to get to her ride out.

. . .

May's tension in the limo was an almost physical thing. “We're going straight back to base. Right now.”


	15. Trust Exercise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's get weird.

Eric Koenig's usually genial, wriggly mood was gone. He was all business, the round and affable face looking more like a punched brick. He glanced at Coulson where he sat at his desk, then he looked at each of the core team members where they ringed the room in turn. He finished his quick study, his attempt to organize himself, with a glance at Romanoff leaning against a chair next to Agent May. Everyone looked alert, intent on finding out what was behind the emergency call. “I'm just going to get right to it. We lost four of our international safehouses in three hours last night – One in Norway, one in the Ukraine, one in Bolivia, and the last in Chad. No visible traces of our agents remain at the scenes, controlled demolition at every one. We got a scan out at one of the sites, they got basically a vapor of DNA along some of the rubble that we're testing. Whatever blew in toasted our people straight out of existence, and then toasted the safehouses themselves for a coup de grace.”

“Any idea what caused the demo?” May's face was tight, the anger on it clear. The warning she'd sent outside Agger's warehouse hadn't been enough. It was hard for her to not blame herself, even though there was nothing else she could have done.

“High-temperature implosion. One guy we sent out cracked it looked like a bomb literally walked in and blew itself up. The tech guy with him? Decided that wasn't a joke. That's the actual theory we're running with right now. We got some surveillance video of the one in Norway; some streetcams picked up most of what you're gonna see.” Koenig waved a hand at the screen that appeared across from Coulson's desk. The scratchy black and white video filled it.

At another gesture, it started. “As you can see, nothing happens. Nothing's there. Now, sixteen seconds in... we've identified that as Agent Mark Eggleston opening the door.” A tiny figure stood framed in the doorway. He paused it. “Note the visual distortion in the recording. It's unidentified. Eighteen second mark.” The video resumed, and the agent was gone. “Thirty second mark.” The building fell into itself, veiled by smoke.

Koenig fiddled with a control. “Skipping to two hours later.” A closer view, recorded on a professional camera. The building's bricks seemed melted in places.

“What the _crap?”_ Skye looked aghast.

“Yeah. 'Invisible death ray robots or something.' That is an actual line from a situation brief I got this morning.” Koenig looked down at Coulson with an unhappy shrug. “That's a new one.”

“The giant stirs.” Loki said, the three words hitting the cold air with a portent he possibly didn't intend. He crossed his arms against his chest. “They send their toys out to the world, intended to come play with us.”

Koenig spun towards him, agitated. “Could we not call 'em toys? We lost eight agents today. That's one hell of a _toy_.”

Loki inclined his head deeply towards the agent, voice contrite. “My intent was misaimed. I apologize. Latveria itself might consider these things trinkets. Disposable weaponry to avenge what they believe slew their own. But to you – to us - they are quite potent.” His face creased. “The wires I thought little of... but your man's theory? I wouldn't have expected such creations there, and I agree it is disturbing. Save for Stark's curiosities, little else that I've seen of your peoples is on that level.”

“See any Asgardian influence?” Coulson came out of himself to shoot the question up at the towering figure, his fingers fiddling with a stray pen from his desk.

He shook his head. “No. I realize you think of the Destroyer, but that was a construct with an ancient and specific purpose. They did not often turn to robots to do what warriors ought. Thinking machines, destructive machines... it's not Asgard's way. And while there is much else in the galaxy, this yet feels unfamiliar.”

Coulson grimaced. Nothing was ever that easy. “Romanoff?”

She gave the alien a sideways glance before giving a slow, grim shrug. “I got almost ten miles within the border. Once. They had monitoring equipment, some drones. Most of it unobtrusive, but you could always _sense_ you were being watched. I had to keep moving and I still got chased out. I never got that deep. Never saw big ordinance, and what I saw is almost a decade out of date. I don't know what this is.”

Fitz looked up at her from his chair where he'd been gnawing on a knuckle in worry. “So, what do we do to stop this? Can't be so simple as calling and saying 'look, please, it's not us.'”

“They don't take phone calls. They don't even have an acknowledged connection to the Internet. I've got twenty bucks that says they're latched in somehow – hell, for all we know, they've got a secret Tumblr blog full of Latverian pet pictures – but they're not taking emails. And they're not going to just believe us that their single public face is pulling a fast one. I can prove it to you, yeah. You got my brief on what I took from Agger's phone, and I'll verify under any oath you throw at me that von Bardas is running this. But I don't know what I can prove to Latveria from here.”

Skye grimaced. “Not even, like, a mailbox through the UN? Putting up a website that says ' _We're sorry. Call us?_ ' isn't going to work, is what you're saying.”

Natasha looked down at May, thinking. “They do have a route through the UN, yeah. They're not an official member, and they never show up but there's still channels they can use to monitor. Standard international courtesies.”

“Small problem,” said May. “I bet that channel goes straight to von Bardas.”

Coulson looked down at his desk as an alert flickered its reminder. The tight, pinched expression on his face drew a glance from Loki as he activated it. “Ah, yeah. Speaking of that... she's in play. The notification came through just before you guys got back into town.”

“What?” May leaned forward to search his face. “What's she doing?”

“Filed a public flight plan. She's going straight to Washington D.C. tomorrow.”

“Oh, that's great.” Natasha pushed away from her friend's chair, clearly frustrated. “She's going to sell us all up the river. I really wanted to go on national TV again talking about our security mistakes, too.”

“We don't know for sure that's all she'll do. She could sell out Roxxon. Or really stir the pot. Go big.”

“Set all the world against her country and hope to gain control in the chaos that will rise?” Loki's theory drew one of Natasha's narrow, contemplating stares. He gave her a wry smile. “It's not unlike what I might do.”

His attempt at self-deprecation went down like a brick. “We'd get along so much better if you talked less while I'm around. Or, you know, not at all.” She smiled sweetly back at him.

“I'm not _wrong_.”

Coulson snapped his fingers at the pair to shut them up. “We've got a two-front problem and I need a two-front solution. First, whatever von Bardas is gonna barf up to the folks in D.C. has to get shut down. She's got the field. I want it pulled out from under her. Someone's gotta get to her, corner her, and get her off our backs. Bonus if you can figure out how to throw her back to Latveria with our rep intact. Chew over theories on that, and do it fast.” He got up from his desk, clasping his hands behind his back. “Second front, we need to find some new way to approach Latveria. Clear the air with them.”

That got both Natasha and Loki looking at him warily. “Yeah, I'm not wild about being in the dark on what's there. But I'm coming at this from a singular angle – I want them to stop killing our people immediately. That means we at least get back to square one with them. If they're gonna be an established threat in the future, then we also need to buy time to assess that threat. Get some frickin' eyes on this.”

“Yeah, but how?” Skye flapped her hand. “I can do whatever you need for a message. I can compile everything we got, make a PowerPoint presentation, make the fanciest set of emails with all the cutest emojis but we can't get it to them.”

“Not without going in,” said Natasha. “And you don't get in. We've tried. More than what's in the files.” She looked around the room. “I don't want to get into it too deeply, but I'll just put it out there that my predecessors on the other side of the ocean took a few cracks at that nut. Nobody broke it. I'm telling you, with every skill, every bit of training I have, you don't get in. You're down to stapling notes to paper airplanes.”

“Well, crap!” Skye looked over at Simmons, who'd been able to add nothing. The slight shake of her head was in agreement with the basic sentiment. The room filled with murmurs, the low drone of thinking out loud, of trying to puzzle out some solution.

Coulson caught Loki studying him, a strange expression on his face. “What?”

The demigod looked away, realizing he'd picked the direction that held the careful, mistrustful stare of Romanoff. “There is one way I can think of to send this message. One way alone, and that's all it can do. That I could do.”

“You think you can be a better infiltrator than anyone in SHIELD?” Natasha's tone was gentle, even curious. The tense, glittering eyes revealed her real tone.

“It's not that. Not at all.” He still looked unwilling. “You don't understand and I am drawn to hesitation, for you don't wish to listen, either.” Loki looked to Coulson. “The first hurdle: You'd have to trust me in this method. No other choice but to give me that trust, to deliver what you need.”

Coulson put up a hand as Natasha inhaled. “Get in the hall.”

. . .

Coulson shut the door, his team still muttering theories between them inside the room. “Trust.”

“I know.”

“Why are you asking me for that when we both know a hell of a lot better than to pull that word out openly without a lot of precautions and binding agreements?” He looked up at the pale demigod when he said nothing. “If – let's roll with this – if I agreed to whatever you have in mind, I gotta be able to explain why I gave that trust when someone asks. I gotta be able to put my own word behind it. We've come a long way over this last year, you and me, and that's pretty goddamn weird. But that's not enough for everybody else. Not yet. Gimme something I can put my word behind.”

Loki stared over his head, his face tight. “Ask Skye.”

“No, I'm asking you.” He waited, but only for a few seconds. “Latveria is going to burn us out of our house over this. They didn't tease or threaten. They went straight for our kidneys. Time is a factor for us, and that makes it a factor for you. You signed up for this. Spit it.”

The unwilling look didn't leave, but he talked. “The victim you first sent us to. Stutgart walked away from what he'd been. I tell her – tell Skye - this is a theory, but I believe in it. He threw his envelope away when the other didn't. I'd wager the others had theirs; loyal to the end. Messages consistent enough that Romanoff knows their riddle. But not the teacher. He chose his own life, and that wasn't enough to save him. The old road came up under his feet to find him, to drag him unstoppably down into death.” A flickering pause. Coulson thought he saw a whisper of regret pass across Loki's face. “And in South Carolina is a little girl who knows only that her friend is gone forever, and that no one will ever tell her the truth of why that happened.”

Loki looked down as Coulson still studied him, the broad brow deeply furrowed. “Look at me with what you know of this recent past between us all here and say you cannot see why I'll avenge that, freely.”

. . .

“We're listening to his plan.” Coulson shot Romanoff a firm look, cutting off whatever response she had. “Let me put it like this: Anyone come up with something else while we were in the hall?”

Dead silence answered him.

“Right.” He turned to regard Loki, coming back into the room behind him. “Details. What's your game?”

“No spies, nor drones. No one person may walk in, nor device. Nothing works.” He shrugged, a trace of reluctance still furrowing his brow. “But borders do not seal against beasts. You cannot defy the small things of nature.”

“Plainer language.” Coulson paused, thinking he'd put the gist together anyway before second-guessing himself. “Wait.”

Simmons lifted both her eyebrows up to her hairline, also not quite willing to go where that suggested. “I... know you explained to me why invisibility would be too costly for something like this. Too much energy burned, too many external details to wrangle and layer together for longer than brief moments. So, what, you'll illusion yourself as an animal to get past the border?”

“No.” Loki shook his head once, sharp. “Illusions work best as masks, or as little riddles thrown freely around – a stick becomes a snake, a handful of pebbles playing at diamonds, or some distant ghost to chase. There's often a shadow of shape to build around, an echo to ground the illusion. But here there's also the risks of the unknown. It's difficult to pierce an illusion's veil, but not impossible. I can't be certain of that and I don't bet willingly against what I do not know.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Coulson blinked. “You're not talking about... No way.”

“Shapeshifting. Yes.” The tense look returned.

The room went still, faces lighting up in different shades of perplexion. Coulson lifted a single finger, not able to keep his voice from sounding stunned. “Okay. _What_?”

“A small animal will go unnoticed across any border in any world. Travel where it likes. I can do this thing, yes. Use that unthreatening shape to deliver your message. Skye's compiled notes.” A slow, uncomfortable shrug followed his words. “And as I say, only this. What I am offering to do is _dangerous._ Costly.”

Coulson still stared at him. “Well. That wasn't on your resume. What do you mean, dangerous?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets while he talked, the narrow face still taut. “Nature does not welcome a lie and so you must forge it carefully and with sacrifice; when you take the shape of a thing, you _are_ that thing for the duration. Your greater mind and soul is often but a shadow drifting behind, guiding the changeling's thoughts like a vivid dream. The connection _can_ break if you are incautious. Harmed or too deeply endangered and the link between what you are and what you've become will shatter. Even remaining in the shifted dream too long might ensnare you. You will be trapped and ultimately die in that shape, never remembering what you once were. It is not an easy thing to do. I do _not_ offer this lightly. But I could deliver your note. Nothing else.”

“How the absolute crap do you pull off this stuff?” Skye stared at him. “Like, do you just go to Asgard Wizard School and make buddies with the one werew-”

Loki cut her off. “ _Please._ I know this sounds strange to you. Don't jest with it. Magic is not simple, though half the game is pretending it is. But every discipline has risks to it you cannot imagine. I taught myself this one long ago, yes, and I am just wise enough to not flaunt it about. I can shift. I can become other so long as that shape seems to be some echo of me, hold some essence of myself. But I will _never_ do it without good and just cause. I mislike its risks too greatly.”

“And needs must,” said Simmons, her hands clasped in front of her. “Oh, dear.”

“Fine. We're going with it.” Natasha shot Coulson a hot look. He returned it evenly, knowing how well the next bit was going to go down. “May, you're on the capital. You figure out how to get to von Bardas, that's your half of it. Skye, I want you to rig a USB with everything we've got. Go small. Small enough to fit on a collar or something. Romanoff, you're tasked with getting Loki as close to Latveria's border as you can. You know the way. We need that.”

Natasha unfolded her arms, outright staring at him. Then, just as quick as the storm gathered, it broke and faded away. “All right.” She nodded, finding a viable plan immediately. “We'll come in from the East side, through Romania. Close to where I got in. The last several attempts to breach the border came from the north, so, that's probably where they'll be more concentrated these days. Anyway, I know a good route. Heavily forested. I can get close.” She looked around the room, playing off her anger. “No, I don't like it. I won't lie. But what's the other choice?”

Coulson nodded slowly, noticing May studying her friend carefully. Then he looked at Loki.

Loki did not look fond of this development, either. But he nodded to Coulson with weary, wary eyes.


	16. Papers, Please

Coulson stuck them on a direct flight into Eastern Europe less than an hour after Natasha confirmed to him that she could map a clean route to the border. A few calls on the way and she had a van waiting for her in the Romanian city of Arad when they landed. Blessedly, Loki hadn't talked at all during the fast flight. He'd been busy preparing notes of his own, working over some sort of intricate diagram that was either magic or doctorate level experimental physics. Maybe there wasn't much difference. He didn't confide – fine with her. And when they retrieved the cheap, bleak looking van, he'd settled himself in the wide back of it without a word. His only request was that the vehicle have that open space if possible. Whatever.

She drove them west into the fringes of a large Romanian state park that would eventually butt up against the border, checking her phone now and then to see if there were any updates on the D.C. side of the situation yet. There weren't. Each time she was done she ended up flinging the phone onto the passenger seat, bopping it against the small carry-all and the smaller cargo it carried: a USB stick not much bigger than a child's pinkie, and a thin pet collar.

She was having a hard time getting over that. No point in asking the _other_ cargo if this was really a thing about to happen. Every once in a while she looked back to see him sitting cross-legged and silent on the floor of the van in an outfit of incongruously ordinary black clothes – _Jeans,_ for God's sake, and a cotton hoodie to boot. And every time, she swore in florid, coarse Russian under her breath. Picturing all the ways she could probably get a whack in on him, while his attention was utterly elsewhere. A demigod, an alien, yes. But they could bleed. She let the thoughts go, prioritizing the job over her idle fantasies. After a while, she stopped seeing him back there. Probably laid out to nap while he could, although she thought she got a whiff of ozone and electrical sparks once. It was likely just the creaky old van, the best her bribe and his request was going to snag on short notice.

The park's trails only went so far into the wilderness, part of whatever border deal Romania made with Latveria back when it was still operated by identifiable people. She pulled the van off-road, rumbling through some rugged terrain before deciding that was as far as the van was going to get. Then she lifted her chin up to pitch her voice into the back. “We've got a couple miles to hike before you'll see what the border looks like. I don't know how far out their observations go, so we need to get stealthy as of right now. You ready?”

She managed to make the question sound only slightly grudging. She felt completely valid in her attitude regarding SHIELD's adoption of the murderous alien, but that was still secondary. The job was always first. Professionalism made the hard core of her being, the ultimate fall-back when things got hot. What she felt wasn't important. What the team needed, that was king.

Natasha's question found no response. With a creak of the van's fake leather seat under her butt, she turned around to peer into the dim back. Her eyes went wide when she realized she couldn't see him. _Did he bolt?_

No way he could have changed already. There'd been no flashy action from the depths of the van. But then, maybe there wouldn't be. She remembered the smell in the air a little earlier and got out of the vehicle. She always checked her surroundings, but she wasn't hearing any ambitious hikers or park guards in the area. Then she went back to the van and opened the two wide doors. What she saw made her step back once.

It was one of the biggest cats she'd ever seen. The shape of it – of Loki – reminded her of a Maine Coon. _No,_ she corrected herself _. Bigger. Forest cat._ Her numb, startled mind pulled the breed together as she looked at the way some of his long fur tips ended in almost silvery wisps contrasted against the thicker black that made up the rest of him. He sat primly on the edge of the opened van, regarding her with half-narrowed but striking green eyes in an angular and sleekly sable face. No trace of anything humanoid in them, just the cold, regal stare of an almost feral animal.

Yet it was somehow still clearly _him._

It was probably the attitude. And the straggly, wild-looking mane along the animal's neck. She put her shoulders forward, pulling herself back together. Nothing more to this than what the jerk said he was going to do. She put a single finger up in front of the cat's triangular face. “If you show me your ass, we're going to have a problem.”

His response was a slow blink, redolent with feline contempt. A thick, brushy tail curled around his front paws.

“Watch the sass.” The back of her neck prickled as the cat blinked at her again. She could swear she almost heard a ghostly whisper following it – _I'm a cat, what precisely do you expect?_

Probably not actually his voice. Just standard cat antics. “Sit. Or whatever. I'm getting the gear bag.”

. . .

 Trust. Lucia von Bardas smiled at the weighty concept behind the word, a private gleam meant only for herself in the solitude of her hotel room. She spent her entire life stockpiling that commodity, built the first piece of it off the back of her dead father, and now the investment was paying off exactly as she'd hoped. In her hand was the advanced device that would ensure no one could overhear nor trace her conversations. As for the man on the other end of the phone line? He held enough idiotic braggadocio to be ultimately harmless. His mistakes could no longer touch her.

But she could use those mistakes to sacrifice him. Along with the others. She could permit herself a trace of regret that sacrifice was necessary, but the plan prevailed. It was their only chance.

Everything was perfect. From here, all she needed was time. Stir the Americans, and then maybe she'd take a train to New York and visit the UN. _He_ would be forced to deal with the world, and in that might be enough chaos to end his control.

“Agger, you're worrying over precisely nothing.” Lucia rolled her dark eyes up to the ceiling as she paced in slow, elegant strides, her voice both comforting and arrogant.

_“I'm not worried, Lucia. I'm frickin' pissed off. I got played by some Hollywood bimbo. Do you know how that makes me feel?”_

“I'm not sure I care. Latveria's begun to lash out, just as planned. No little uncertain whisper of my voice on your phone is going to stop his fury. He cares too much for what he owns, mechanical or living, to let such an insult stand. No, there are no options left for his prey.”

_“When this got started, you told me, you promised me none of this was going to come back to Roxxon. And then SHIELD started sniffing around. Look, I know the target's been chosen, but I can still get dragged into this mess. I don't want your boss-”_

“His lordship,” she corrected him, pride in her words and a lie on her lips.

_“Whatever. I don't want that guy's eye turning on me. Not even for the money in play here.”_

“Not even for a little extra?” She baited the trap, knowing the depths of his greed. It would keep him connected, keep him tractable... usable.

There was a long, chilly pause on the other end. _“Do I want to know?”_

“I've tricked a few little items your way, enough to make you a kingdom of Wall Street, but how about a larger one?” She smiled, almost hearing the way his mind ticked along. “The next wave will come soon. He gives them a space of time to grow frightened, Dario, but he will send more of his creations to incinerate those he believes to be his enemies. And I know how to shut his machines down. He _trusts_ me with that much. A single misfire, that's all it would appear as.” She laughed, the sound bell-like in her smooth, carefully trained American accent. “How would you like to study a fully realized combat drone? An advanced robot designed solely for spreading doom and fear at the behest of a single master? What could you sell the American military once you've torn that apart and made it your own?”

_“I want that.”_

“Of course you do, Agger. You're a businessman.” The people of SHIELD were a worthy sacrifice in the name of salvation, she did not put them to the axe for pleasure. She believed in that. But the notion of letting one of the constructs destroy this vulgar Agger in his moment of greed? She turned and beamed out the window, looking across the D.C. sky and the future beyond it. “Let's do business.”

  _. . ._

_“Well, we can't get audio, but we know she's in there.”_ Skye's little 'ugh' noise filled the comm link.  _“Trying to get into the hotel system to see if she's got any requests in the morning. Taxis or whatever. Taking me a little bit, though. What the hell does it mean when a hotel has better security protocols on their 'net connection than most places with a top secret clearance?”_

“I don't know, Skye. It means they actually did the thing where they scrambled both letters and numbers in the wifi password, and didn't just pick the name of the IT guy's dog?” May allowed a smirk at the second 'ugh.'

_“I hate everything. Oh, hold on, I got it. Yay for off the rack encryption. K... yeah, no taxi, but she's got one of those really cool limos coming in the morning. The bullet-resistant ones and all.”_

“I was kind of thinking of  _not_ jumping straight to political assassination. She give any sort of itinerary?” If von Bardas moved through a publicly accessible space, May could get an approach together. But once she got under the umbrella of Capitol Hill, it was probably over. Hell, it might already be over. One wrong phone call, or maybe just a teleconference with the world via Skype, and this angle of attack was hash. She spared a thought for the other plan in action, wondering what exactly the pair was up to in Romania.

_“She's playing it close. Breakfast call is at six am, dining area. Must be a morning person. Limo at seven-thirty. Gonna push then?”_

“You got anything else?”

_“Not yet.”_

May slumped in the seat of the anonymous-looking black sedan, one of dozens probably just on this block alone in the nation's capital. “Keep me posted. But no, until I get more, I'm just going to send in someone to tag and then track her. Look for a better window before jumping her. ”

_“No assassination, no interrupting brekkie...”_ Well, flippancy was one way of dealing with stress.  _“Oh, Romanoff sent a text message for you just now.”_

May arched an eyebrow. “What's it say?”

_“'Mel, you would not believe the day I'm having.'” She attached a photo. You wanna – oh, hell no, you gotta see this.”_

She swiped up the incoming message, the other eyebrow lifting to match the first. “It  _does_ look like him. Only, you know, small and furry.”

_“Even as a cat he looks high maintenance.”_

“And in need of a brush.”

They laughed like hell.

. . .

The cat easily kept up with Natasha through the thick brush as the Latverian border approached. He was either showing off or practicing advanced lessons in how-to-cat as he mostly chose to fox-jump from bundles of dead undergrowth to low-hanging branches as they traveled. For her part, she kept low; maintaining full cover and always with at least one eye on the sky.

“Fifty yards and you're across the border from here,” she said when they came to the edge of a wide clearing. “This is where I stop, you'll notice there's no cover left. That's on purpose. Either end of the clearing is flanked hard, got a dangerous creek over there on the north end. Doesn't look wide, but it's deep. Lost an agent in there in the eighties, so don't go swimming.”  _Or do, by all means._

She glanced down at the animal as it stared up at her through slit green eyes.  _Do you actually understand me right now?_ “Other side is a lot of underbrush and prickly crap. Doable, but I have a sneaking suspicion they've used it for their own transports in the past. But the way you are? Clearing's probably fine. And beyond that? Last report in the early seventies suggested the country's capital is about thirty miles in, straight down one of the few main roads. I got a distance view and I'm pretty sure that's right. You're going to have to wing it, but the road isn't hard to find.”

The cat made a soft, fangy  _meek!_ noise. He dropped from the low branch at her side down to the ground, stopping for a quick preen of his mane before looking up at her expectantly.

Natasha took the USB out of her pocket first, holding it between two fingers while she dug for the coiled cat collar. She had a sudden, absurd mental image of Director Coulson standing in a PetCo with the unamused looking demigod, asking him if he wanted the one with the sparkly rhinestones, or maybe the more macho spiky number. She kept the laughter from burbling out of her, even as the actual collar she pulled out was a plain black strip of faux leather, with a new magnetic clasp attached by Engineering in place of the standard buckle.

The cat gave her a look like he knew damn well what she was thinking, and didn't find it funny in the least.

That made it funnier. Natasha took a slow, dragging inhale. “I'm not going to apologize, and I'm actually not going to do it on purpose, but I'm probably going to accidentally snag some fur here.”

Another fangy mew, this one soundless. He stretched a little, the neck extending out and revealing just how furry the chest under his chin was. The prior amusement tore apart as she felt a sudden, almost physically disgusting reminder that she was about to touch  _him,_ Loki of Asgard, the alien freak who'd mind-tortured Barton and tried to cut apart her own psyche. She almost recoiled. All the cat saw was a tiny waver of hesitation. 

She took another inhale and draped the collar along the back of the neck, digging her fingers into the soft fur along the chest to try and clasp it shut relatively tightly. Her thumb had to brush a tuft out of the way before the magnets pinched. Another quick move and she had the stick latched on, tugging some fur free above the strip to cover everything.

Her fingers itched from the sheer tickling hairiness of the animal, but she made herself study her handiwork before giving in to the urge to wipe her hands off on something, anything. The collar was all but hidden under the thick coat, camouflaged as a darker shape against the black. She took a slow swallow. “You going to be able to yank that off?”

The cat rose to all fours, stretching and wriggling its head around before sitting back down again. Then green eyes blinked up at her in what she could only assume was assent. Then it bounced smoothly down to the soft loam of the forest and began to bound across the clearing in long, agile leaps.

Then he was gone, the first outsider into Latveria in years. She found it in herself to wish him some fraction of good luck – just enough to get the job done.

_Anything else, that's between you and whatever your people have for gods._

_Though it certainly seemed like you thought you were more than enough God for yourself back in the day. So, you know, don't break yourself in half there looking for a merciful deity to cover you._

She slunk her way back into deeper cover and the safety of Romania, waiting for the next word to come.


	17. Catspaw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two-chapter update today, and again Friday to finish it out!

Tagging von Bardas was easy. They sent in an agent dressed like hotel waitstaff, brushing herself by the table and drifting a napkin across the woman's narrow, taut shoulders. The tag underneath was a sticky fabric, dark enough to be masked by the business-cut jacket she was wearing. The only thing the tag would do was track location, nothing else. Even that might burn out within minutes; who knew what sort of gadgets she'd brought out of Latveria for her own protection? Certainly she was riding alone.

Well, as far as anyone could  _see._ Tactical had discussed the possibility that she was accompanied by more of the cloaked devices (or robots), but May and Coulson both agreed that was unlikely. Latveria's reputation was enough to buy safety, so long as they played up that reputation. Furthermore, it would be harder for Lucia to play her games with an oversight committee at her shoulder. Since it was her op, May's opinion ruled the show. She stayed uncomfortably aware that it wasn't the most solid bet on the table, but so far it bore out.

The phone in her jacket pocket crackled into live static.  _“Limo's here,”_ came the quiet alert from an agent inside the hotel.

“I see it.” As Skye indicated, it was a top of the line defensive vehicle. Only the fact that it rode lower and heavier than a number of other luxury limos in the area could tip off a close viewer that this one was special. Made it easier to follow, too, if the tag crapped out. May pulled the sedan out several vehicles behind the limo, calculating the odds on what route Lucia was going to take into the depths of the city.

. . .

Dumitra watched the cat as it seemed to doze in the warm nest of hay and straw that overfilled the back of the truck. It creaked its green eyes open now and then, clearly offended whenever the truck hit a uneven patch of road and jostled the cozy nest. “ _ Destul de kitty, _ ” she cooed at the enormous black animal.  _Pretty kitty._ The little girl giggled to herself, tugging her thin flannel jacket tightly around around her body. “ _Da_ ,  _putem pastra?” Can we keep?_

Her father glanced back through the open window of the truck, watching the wind catch her dark brown hair into wild wisps as he kept driving on Latveria's single main freeway. He smiled, the expression warm on a face that was stoic and sun-browned from years of hard labor in the fields. _“Nu, Dumitra._ _El apartine undeva_.” _He belongs somewhere._ He chuckled, giving her what she really wanted – the admittance she was right about allowing the meowing stray on board at least until they got to the capital. “ _Prea draguta.” Too cute._ Then he put his gaze on the road again, leaning forward to see that the city's hovering guide-drones were indicating a clear path. With all the rains lately, the king's machines had to work quick to keep the few roads clean for the farmers. It wasn't unusual for the small bridges to wash out, but the flickering lights above told him all was well.

Just because so much of the small country was still rural did not mean their great king turned his all-seeing eyes away from the people that formed its heart – just as the king himself explained on the regular radio broadcasts, his voice deep and proud. Dumitra's father tipped his cap in respect as one of the silvery-green and sleek drones whisked by, scanning his cargo and continuing on with a flutter higher in the sky.

She gave his broad back a child's pout, then reached down to stroke the cat between his remarkably furry ears. The eyes creaked open again, flickering up a sharp, wise gaze at her face. The huge tom put his ears back at the sudden uninvited contact, but let her get away with it without a growl or a flash of fang.  _Did_ he belong somewhere? His attitude seemed far too wild. She scratched his neck, finding the strip of collar again. No, her dad was right. There was the proof to remind her.

“We'll get to the  _stadt_ soon. Not the little towns but the big one,” she whispered to the pretty kitty in the best English she'd learned so far. Latveria's small but efficient school system was big on multi-linguistic teaching. In another year, her English would be as good as the Romanian she'd grown up with. All for the eventual day when Latveria would stand revealed as the true heart of the world. “Will you be home there? Oh!” She looked delighted, her mind whirling itself around with ideas of fairytale princes and queens and royal cats deigning to entertain a ballroom throng. “I wonder if you belong in the  _castel mare_ ! Maybe you're the king's own cat!” She spread her hands to give him an example of what she meant, trying to get across the size of the tall stony spires and sprawling halls of the great castle that loomed above the  _stadt._ Hassenstadt, or so it was known once, in the early days of her country.

Only a few remembered that detail. Now they called it by its real name –  _Doomstadt._ The city in the shadow of the king.

The green eyes blinked lazily up at her before lifting one cheek a little higher than the other.  _Scratch there, little minion, if you must demand my attention._

With a giggle at his feline attitude, Dumitra did as commanded.

_. . ._

Dumitra waved goodbye when the cat leapt gracefully out of the truck at the edge of the city and its anachronistic jumble of buildings old and new. To her mind, no doubt still full of fantasies and fables, he seemed perfectly and logically intent on what he needed to do and she dropped back out of sight with the truck's cargo without regrets. But he spared her a glance over his wide shoulder anyway, allowing a single meow of farewell. He didn't know why, some fuzzy drive to be polite to the big hairless things. He was only a cat, and his neck itched hot and wild under the bad-smelling collar. It jostled and wiggled as he moved, sometimes digging into the skin underneath. He could easily bite it off if he wanted, and as he licked vigorously at his own chest, he considered doing just that.

_No._ The faded whisper was an alien intruder in his mind, implacable and insistent. That ugly dream, the eyes within it strange and almost as bright as his own save for the flicker of some terrifying red buried inside. An echo's voice, like himself and also more than himself.  _The castle. I must go to the castle. It's where they keep kings, after all. There's a lesson I know perfectly well._

The cat meowed to himself, confused by the jangling thoughts within his mind, thoughts that didn't fit within the smells and the images and the instincts that formed a cat's intelligence. A city was always a city; under the confusing noise and stink of people were the richer smells of mice and meat. A sweet meow at the right open window and he'd get treats for free. Oh, and those things that were not birds but perhaps he could play-

_drones, they are drones, I cannot act so strange as to draw notice, now let me fall still._

He meowed again, drawing the stare of someone in the street, a tall man in a black uniform edged with a harsh, unfriendly green. He paced back and forth for a moment, trying to remember what he was and where he was going before sitting to wash a paw. The act centered himself – and  _himself_ . The man in the street looked away, seeing nothing more than what the cat wished him to see.

The distant scampering sound of a mouse paused him in mid lick and he turned, eyes narrowing to study out which little nook of red brick it came from.  _Hungry,_ purred the cat-self, easy and secure in the basic needs of beasts. Eat, sleep, and live. No other troubles to consider in all his short life – but a more seductive image forced itself into his mind. Of long tables piled high with food, and wasn't half the fun stealing your prey? The cat looked up at the horizon of the city, almost  _smelling_ the cooked treats that might be in the great spires that broke the sky.

_Yes, the castle. Yes._ Inside the shape of the animal, Loki allowed himself a moment of relaxation, his soul-self still draining quickly under the unceasing instinctive demands of a small cat's mind. A single mental gasp and he reclaimed a firm hold on the reins of the cat's thoughts.  _We do not have forever to play at this._

He disappeared up a clean alley between a rustic pastry shop and a tiny general store with a tinking brass bell above its door, his brushy tail wagging a final farewell to the truck as it pulled away.

_. . ._

Lucia looked into the rearview mirror through the clear divider, her eyes narrowing as she saw the black sedan still several cars back. Nothing to be certain about, but it'd been following the limo for several miles.  _Dario, are you getting cute with me? Sending your idiots after me to make sure our deal is a good one?_ She sniffed, then tapped at the glass between her and the driver. It scrolled down and she smiled cheerily for him. “You know, you're absolutely correct. I've only just arrived and I've got all day before my appointment.” She calculated what she was about ask, making sure that it was what she wanted. It would put her out in the open, but that might be better than Agger's people causing a scene at the Hill. He'd sounded so flaky the night before, rattled by his own incompetence. “Could you be a dear and change course? I'd love to see the Arboretum.”

“Only risk is we might be cutting it close getting back, ma'am. I can get there nice and quick this time of day, but the time it takes to enjoy that? Freeways bloat right up and we'll be a bit slow.”

“Oh, that's fine.” She laughed easily. “They're the ones waiting on me, anyway.”

“Yes ma'am,” he said. Then he shot her an apologetic glance through the mirror. “Got to turn real quick here.”

. . .

 

May swore under her breath. No way she'd been made completely, but Lucia's instincts were pretty sharp. She'd twigged to something. “Visual and tracker tag indicates she's going towards the northeast end, and I think they've noticed my car. Ideas on destination?” She had one, but why bet on the uncertain?

Skye's response confirmed hers.  _“Probably the Arboretum. Only thing worth risking D.C. traffic for on a Friday. In that direction, anyway.”_

With a spin of the wheel, she took a different turn than the modified limo. No point in confirming the Latverian's suspicions. “Get me a team out there to back me. We can't drop her, but we might be able to do an approach. It's public, she won't want to make a scene.”

_“Neither will you.”_

“Yeah, well. It'll be like poker night. Everybody gets their game face on.” May gauged traffic, realizing she was going to have to jump three lanes to get the street she wanted. She went for it the second she saw a gap, ignoring the screech of a horn behind her.

_“I'm realizing why everyone talks about driving in the capital with this sad, grim tone just listening to you navigate.”_ May heard a rustle coming from the other end.  _“I've got some locals deployed. And... Koenig is en route, so there's that.”_

She'd left him wrangling the agents inside the hotel for her, ferrying the messages and watching for mishaps. “Which Koenig?”

_“Who the hell knows. Sam, maybe. The one that does more field work. Says he brought a few things out of the lab that might help. He'll meet you there.”_


	18. Doomsday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of today's update.

Sam Koenig sat on the steps that led down to the reflecting pool at the base of the Capitol Columns. In his pocket was a small black box, an experimental device that so far was capable of blocking out communication on all artificial channels in a small zone with a series of wave pulses. Enough to disrupt, not enough to toast electronics. Naturally, the drawback that kept it in the lab was that it would conk out everything the deployer could use to call for help, too.

He hummed to himself as someone's teenage son grumbled by just above him, fussing angrily with his iPhone and begging to be able to go back to the car. His dad wasn't sympathetic. _You got like three more hours of park to explore, kiddo,_ thought Koenig. _And that's if your folks haul and maybe skip the Gotelli Collection. Which you shouldn't._ _They're pretty cool._ He kept humming, spotting Agent May crossing the space on the other side of the pool. Like a true professional, she didn't spare him a glance. Nor did she look at the woman approaching the Corinthian-style columns from the west, from where the herb gardens filled the fresh summery air with the scent of juniper.

Koenig could see her reflection in the still water, a tall, athletic woman who moved with the honed grace of a long-serving politician. The ones that knew many in the world still might look at her face before hearing what she said, and made of that what advantage she could. Her black hair was tied tight into a neat ponytail that went down the center of her back, and her eyes were so dark a blue in the tanned face that they might have been nearly violet. A striking woman, von Bardas. Something about her reminded Koenig of Romanoff – if need be, she could become a predator in an instant. One of his teeth gnawed at the inside corner of his mouth. This could go bad, fast.

Well, that's what the other contingencies were for. He made himself relax, and gave an incoming duck a grin when it squawked across the pool.

Still across the water, May stuffed her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket and lifted her head to watch rare trees flutter in the distance. This was going to be where the showdown was. Corner her, cage her, keep her from screaming 'wolf' for all to hear, with Latverian fire to follow.

. . .

There was the squat man on the steps, and the woman across the pond, and she'd noted two others beside at least, as she came down the flowered paths into the depths of the Arboretum grounds. A soft bleat of warning from the pocket of her thin coat told Lucia that her connection to Latveria's transmission grid was cut, and that gave her a clue – these were not Agger's men. They were far more clever than that. Well, perhaps the journey to her endgame wouldn't be so dull and simple after all. She lifted her head to regard the woman as she approached the columns as casual as any other visitor. “I was led to believe you were nothing more than paper tigers, a relic of a world gone by. The fading shadow of what you once were. But then, the man that told me this has proven to be a greedy and bestial fool.”

There wasn't so much as a flicker of surprise on the woman's face as she turned towards von Bardas, the gleaming eyes studying her. A tiger to a tiger indeed – and a real one, too. “Sometimes deception's the better part of valor.”

Lucia beamed at her, delighted. “A student of the arts. I have seldom been so delighted to be wrong.”

The other woman looked unmoved by her approval. Her hands never left the pockets of her black jacket. Not a gun, this woman was not so blatant as that. A stunner, at best. Considering the location, she came with her voice alone, most likely. “Yeah, it's a real pleasure. Call Latveria off of SHIELD.”

She made a moue of disappointment. “And now we're straight to the obvious. Well, _coleg tigru,_ I'm genuinely sorry. I can't do that. Your sacrifice is what I need. For a better world.” She flicked a hand towards the man on the steps. “I assume by your competence that we are not being overheard by the greater public?”

“You'd know some of that better than I. But we've done what we can.”

Lucia nodded, still smiling pleasantly. She let it falter. “I will reason with you, and then you will walk away from me. I am going to let you die, all of you be consumed and light a storm of chaos, because it is the _only_ way to save what remains from what might come if I do not.”

“And what's coming?”

Von Bardas leaned forward, her hand outstretched to the slim Asian woman. Her voice was a plea, and inside the cold, merciless calculation that got her this far was a moment of true earnestness. _“Doom.”_

. . .

The city's rustic old-world charms kept the people feeling warm and safe, content under the eye of their unseen king, but as the cat traveled further up the terrain past warehouses and their finely made facades, another truth became visible. There were things rumbling deep in the earth under the dwindling avenues, the constant vibration of some unknown machinery tickling the pads of the huge black feet and keeping his whiskers back in distrust. The earth did not welcome what was buried within it, but he could not take the time to go investigate. There must be the castle and only the castle. The message, and then he must flee back to his own world and his real shape. The rest must be seen some other way, some other time.

The great castle so adored by the people in the city below might have been abandoned, but for the occasional wisp of smoke that came from tall parapets. He scampered through a creaking low door that led to what must have once been stables, wrinkling his short but ferociously adept nose at the smell of must and old, moldy straw. His jaw hung, tasting and categorizing the air and finding it unsettling. Rocky steps led through old unused kitchens still attached to a newer facility, and there he saw a few people muttering quietly to each other.

 _Meats,_ whispered the cat-self, not for a moment forgetting the lure that drew it here.

 _First the game. Then meat._ The soul-self gave no hint that it was lying, Loki wanting only to complete this duty and be gone. Some distant warning was intruding at the edge of his senses, something other than just the draining exertion of being _other._

The cat shook his head, wanting to rebel. But the alien force that was his real nature held firm and he skulked away down darker halls lined with towering suits of armor. He flickered a glance up at them, most of these suits looking much like the other, and a few some variation on a theme. All held bodies of some silvery alloy that gleamed in the moody torchlight that lit the castle halls, and all of them were robed with the same heavy green fabric. He didn't like _that_ shade, that off-key tone of a color his soul-self considered part of his own emblem. Too harsh and bright a green, no nature to it, no subtlety. There was a sickliness to it, and the huge tomcat began to unhappily lower his body closer to the floor as he continued to look for stairways up.

. . .

“Doom. I'm not impressed yet. We've heard that before.”

“Not like this, Miss... may I have your name? Only your name, while we talk.” Lucia's hand was still outstretched. The game was in play, and now _trust_ was the only coin to be paid. She must sell _his_ for hers.

“May.”

Lucia repeated the name. “You must know so little of Latveria. Victormade sure of that.” She glanced down the steps before shrugging. She walked away from 'May,' no doubt troubling her. But all she did was take a seat next to the squat man and his affable face. He tried to not look surprised at this twist in their plan. “Who was the woman that broke our border a few years ago? She was astounding; the closest anyone's ever been to our heart. She must have at least seen the spires of his castle.”

“I'm not giving you that.”

“Fair enough.” von Bardas shrugged. “But I will give you this. My family founded that country. We built it, on our blood and bones, because the people needed us to. My father lived his entire life in service, and we did not call ourselves _kings._ I am no princess. We did not need the old, half-ruined castle that was but some landmark when we forged our first borders. We lived among the people, the _Rromani_ refugees that you people still hate to this day, the Urdu, the weary Hungarians, the Serbs tired of conflict. We made of ourself an oasis. One place of peace. And then he rose from that oasis, and wears what we could have been as his mask.”

She laughed a little. “A brilliant, diseased mind, Miss May. Oh, my father told me he was such a wise child. A curious one. And then the books... the secrets... and one night where everything fell apart. My father died.” She looked up at the SHIELD agent. “And he had the temerity, the arrogance to come to me and say _serve me, and make my new world with me, and the sacrifices will not be in vain.”_ She snorted. “Sacrifices. The rotten core of Latveria under that good earth is his fault. My father _died_ because the new king knew nothing of limits. He died screaming, in fire, and the king tells me it was a mistake.”

“You serve him anyway.”

Lucia gave her a bitter smile. “You do not turn away from the king. But in that fire I earned his trust. And now I'll use it to tear him down, to save what remains of the world.” She shook her head, her tanned, fine hands clasped on her knees. “What remains. Better than the alternative. I promise you.”

Above her, she could see the agent looking away across the water. Her face was solid stone. For a moment, Lucia's resolve faltered. She'd been wrong about their strength. Could she _possibly_ have been wrong about the odds?

She steeled herself, pushing that thought away. “I do not do this lightly, though since you are here I will apologize for the cruelness of it. I will remember you.”

“Yeah, we're going to make sure of that.” The agent looked down at her. “At what point do you honestly think we're going to let you walk out of this park and make your revolutionary fantasy happen?”

Very well. Reason would not pay the price, nor trust.

There was always another currency.

“This point,” said von Bardas, and she rose again to her feet.

. . .

The cat crept slowly into the hall that flickered with a fire's light. The hearth cast its warmth throughout the surprisingly small and cozy space, the great tapestries and their woven murals fluttering against the wind that came from the tall, open windows set inside heavy grey stones. And still, there was no noise nor life for the cat to find.

The throne room, long and austere, had been empty. So he continued to seek some other space where a king might contemplate his deeds and his future, and the smells of a still-warm path led him here. In the center of the room was a wide, low desk of carved hard wood, no doubt the dark-stained trunks of some evergreen breed within Latveria's own ecology. Stools set with rich cushions were scattered around it, and as the cat approached, he used one of these to bound to the table's surface to get a better, more central view of the room.

There was nothing, no track here that he could smell. He widened his eyes to pick out details in the flickering shadows of the room. Not far from the table was a single massive wooden chair, almost another throne. In it was another of those strange armored statues, this one seated with legs arrogantly spread under its long green tunic, as if to mimic some eternally watching royal. With a vague, instinctive fear, the feline's fur prickled along his back as he studied the metal figure. It did not move. It only sat, regarding the table and the scattered documents along it.

It was the best Loki was going to get. He could feel time drawing short, and his own caution warned him, reminded him that the longer he stayed as an animal, the sooner that siren's easy dream would fill his mind to bursting. The cat sat down in the table's center, his full and twitching tail scattering a few papers by casual accident. He gave another distrusting look at the strange metal statue, and then licked at his chest until his fang could snare the black faux-leather collar.

With a gnaw and a snap of his tongue across his lips as he tugged apart the relatively weak magnetic connection, he managed to clatter his cargo to the table, the USB stick making a small plastic _clink!_ noise as it connected with the wood.

The prickling sensation came back, harder and more ferocious. The cat's fur began to rise sharp along the spine, ears going flatly back as the green eyes began to widen to almost full blackness. The huge triangular head swiveled to search the room, trying to find what threatened him, but there was only the statue.

_The statue!_

There were eyes in it now, gleaming, human eyes flickering inside the steel mask that was its only face. And from the depths of that mask came the low, almost musically basso voice. “It has been written by playwrights and clergymen that ' _a cat might look at a king.'_ That even, assessing stare of the little beasts, and they may not be afraid of that larger shape that looms, even if that shape could but speak a single word and seal its _doom._ ”

The statue rose flowed to its feet, the green tunic coiling down to reveal itself as a grotesquely regal robe. For all its size and powerful presence, it moved silently, towering over the cat as he hunched down hard against the table, every tuft of fur now aloft and almost electrical in frozen, startled terror at the hulking thing that approached. The implacable voice rumbled again from within it, deep with conviction. “But you are _not_ some mere cat.”

The cat uttered a low, horrified moan, rattling it down within his throat. Inside his mind, chaos whirled as Loki tried to remind himself that this was only temporary, that he didn't need to be afraid, all he had to do was maintain control and get out. That it was a bluff, that there were few on this world that could know magic. But his animal-self, startled by the sudden turn and the focused attention, felt only that sincere promise of danger and fought against him outright. He was caught in the primal, open terror of a beast that found something well far up the food chain from its own safe niche.

He was slipping. As hard as he drove his mental fingers into his own changed flesh, the tips of them still slid against himself. The cat nearly forgot him, licking white spittle from his lips and continued to growl and moan at the shape as it approached. “Or are you? We smell your fear, sorcerer. If you lose against this, we will keep you. Study you, as your fragile life dwindles, and then we will open your body to read the words written in it.” The mask drew closer and inside the tumbling animal-mind Loki felt like he could see not the cat but _himself,_ drawn and fading and almost lost, somehow reflected in the flat surface of a steel cheek. Another sensation followed it – something prickling in the ether known by magicians, a stench like ozone and electricity and ice. “We will take your secrets and create something new.”

The cat hissed and swung out on instinct, the sharp claw thudding against the collar. Inside, the panic threatened to consume him entirely. The silver thread between his two selves quivered, stretched taut to almost its final extent by the aura of magic that tickled along the fringes of the man inside the mask. _No! This one knows! He sees me!_

Witchcraft and the dark rumors of sacrifice and demons in the heart of sealed Latveria. He suddenly, utterly believed Natasha's stolen legends, and all he could smell from the man inside the steel beast was a fiery darkness. His heart threatened to burst itself apart.

“Do you think Victor von Doom cares for your message?” A metal gauntlet came down atop the USB. Inside the maelstrom, Loki braced himself for the possibility that the next sound he would hear would be some tiny, plasticky crunch. That would end him, the final failure. He clasped hard onto the possibility that the monstrous king might not, tied a rope to that ledge of chance to try and rescue himself.

The figure – this Doom incarnate – laughed from within the green hood that surrounded his mask, low and rattling. He lifted his hand to regard the offering now nestled in his palm. “Perhaps we do, after all. You gave so much to bring it.” The gleaming eyes fixed on him again. “Will you give a little more? Stay. As our _guest_. We will take only everything from you, as a fine offering to Doom's further greatness.”

The cat moaned one more time and flung himself away from the table, the last chance for his mind and soul now resting in a wild flee away from this place. He hit the clean stone with a scrabble of scraping claws, looking for purchase and nearly hooking himself along a scrap of thick rug. He righted himself and kept going, out of the room and looking for the way to freedom.

 _“_ Run all you like, sorcerer,” said Victor von Doom, looking down again at the device in his palm. The unseen smile behind the mask entered his rumbling voice. “Run, and be chased. If you can make it to the border, then you might be free. This is our mercy, in return for your gift. _Run._ ”

Beyond his sanctum, Doom's metal servants came to life with a rattling clank throughout the winding halls, ready to hunt the fleeing animal as it rushed between their feet.


	19. The Cat Returns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First part of today's final update.

May was ready for the lunge, but even she was surprised with the quickness of it. Von Bardas went low, a trained tackle towards May's own legs that, even if it missed, had no chance of unbalancing the attacker. She dodged neatly, guessing the Latverian woman would topple right – and she did, before dropping into an artful roll. May's counterattack swept overhead, despite an attempt to adjust it at the last second. She braced herself, eating the quick jab to her ribs and making sure she barely staggered back from the force of it. No value in losing ground in the first seconds of the brawl.

Von Bardas snarled, then went on the attack again. “This is not what I wanted!” Something appeared in her hands. May saw a light blue electrical snap in the air, her eyes widening. She grabbed Lucia on the upper arm when the modified taser swung in, tugging and spinning the woman as best and as hard as she could.

She had age and experience on the Latverian, and she used it. The weapon dropped out of Lucia's hand when May's impact forced a moment of numbness throughout her fingers. May kicked it away, the toe of her boot knocking the device into the grass on the other side of the steps. Behind them, she heard a few of the tourists up on the hills begin to exclaim to each other. She took the risk, inhaling a breath and pausing in her counter-assault. Getting the civs out of any danger was more important to her than having him as backup. “Koenig, get an evac!”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him begin to move. But she paid for the order, von Bardas coming back with her other arm and getting her high on the cheek. May saw stars, shaking her head sharply once to keep her vision in the game. That wouldn't be enough to stop her. She was on full, controlled adrenaline. Both her hands snapped out to grab at Lucia when she tried again for another assault, grabbing the arm and twisting it down behind her back.

The woman countered the twist and spun out across the ground, grass smearing across her pant leg. She heaved for air and gasped another plea. “I'm trying to save us.”

May got into a power stance, using the woman's pause for her own quick recovery of breath. “We can do that just fine, and with a lot less collateral damage.”

“You have _no idea_ what's waiting for you in my homeland.”

“What if we find out?”

“You can't!” snarled von Bardas. She took another desperate lunge, this one full towards her opponent's body.

The two women toppled back across the grass in front of the national monument, May letting her back hit the ground before wrapping an elbow around Lucia's neck to either get a stranglehold or at the very least haul her out of the advantageous top position she had. May went for a tactical shot, talking fast between gritted teeth. “We've got an agent inside Latveria now. He's gonna tell your king what you're pulling here. What happens then, huh?” Her grasp around the throat slipped.

The arms holding her down got stronger. “Impossible.”

“Not impossible. You don't know what we can do. Especially not when you've got us pushed into a corner.” May went for a full tumble, shaking von Bardas off. She rolled in the other direction and leapt to her feet, not wanting to find out what else the woman was going to pull out of her pockets without preparation.

It was a knife, just a short, simple knife. May kicked it out of her hand before the lunge even started. “Stop fighting me,” she said, putting all the conviction she could muster into her voice and hoping like hell it wasn't a bluff. “By now, our agent's made it to whatever you've got for a capital. It's over, von Bardas. We can look for another way. Work with us instead of thinking of us as a sacrifice play.”

It paused her, but only slightly. She snapped back, purely confident. “If whoever your agent is did indeed get into Latveria, then he's dead by now!” She went for another lunge and abruptly fell on her face with a gasp.

From behind where the Latverian fell, Sam Koenig looked at May, and then down at von Bardas's taser-like device in his hand. “Well, _that_ works okay.”

May let the tension roll out of her shoulders, jutting her chin at him. She tried to not think about Lucia's flat dismissal of Loki's chances. “Let's get her restrained and out of public view.”

. . .

Latveria's king stood at the window of his sanctum to watch the cat rush out of the wide doors of the stable, permitting himself a quiet moment's memory of a childhood amongst warm camps and the smells of half-wild horses and straggling cows and fresh hay. He came out of it as the constructs, each one made in his own gleaming image, hurried after the cat to do his bidding.

The sorcerer would have no time to spare to shift his shape back into whatever one was truly his own, and his energy was all but depleted. At worst, his soldiers would bring back the exhausted, brittle corpse for him to examine at his leisure. Victor von Doom looked forward to seeing what lay inside the veins and bones, what could be divined from the ash of that strange-smelling wild magic. Magic so different from the dusty rituals he'd sought out that it smelled fresh and somehow enticingly _alien._

Something new, that _dared_ to whisper itself into his Latveria. Something unknown. Mysteries, judged Doom, were seductive pleasantries. He would enjoy piecing together this one.

Ah, but perhaps... just perhaps the sorcerer would live. Perhaps inside the soul of the cat was a being with just enough drive to reach beyond his own boundaries of capability and strength. It all came down to just how much he wished to survive, no matter the cost. Behind the mask, Doom smiled, the lips twisting within an unimaginable face. That would also be an acceptable outcome, one that left questions for an intriguing future. He knew the scent of that sorcerer now. One way or another, he would find his visitor again.

He would keep a room ready for that return. One of his very special ones, deep below the castle. Where the screams could not trouble the good people under his watchful care.

Behind him, at the racks of the sleek computers he himself designed and built, a single alert chimed. The contents of the message were now organized for him, searched for threats and the highlights gleaned. Perhaps it would give him clues as to the identity of his brief visitor. He turned to scan the new information, and his bemusement turned into immediate, boiling fury.

No, he did not doubt what the message told him.

Not with the effort thrown behind the words, the compiled data, the lingering stink of a wizard's fear. He did not forget the lure of his sorcerer, but this was a far greater heresy against his royal self. It could not be permitted to stand.

“Lucia...” whispered Doom into the air of his domain, his voice thick with betrayal and disapproval.

With a flicker of his hand and a command at his terminals, a few of his servants peeled away from their chase, giving the running cat just a _little_ more mercy. He needed them to search the woman's trails through his castle, to see what else he might have missed in his misbegotten trust. And below the depths of the castle, he sent one of his specializedservants on a particular mission, followed by the roaring sound of its own speed.

. . .

Koenig and May managed to get the still-unconscious Lucia away from the columns without drawing too much more notice. The botanists that actually ran much of the behind-the-scenes business of the Arboretum were at a loss, and accepted the story that some sort of terribly minor civilian incident was going on. They let the pair of D.C. 'detectives' through without complaint.

“Keep an eye on her,” said May, throwing herself into the driver's seat of the black sedan she'd arrived in. “Let me know if she wakes up.”

“You want that by telling you or by just shocking the crap out of her until she zonks again?” Koenig shook his head. “This could have been smoother. We still just grabbed an international representative out of a public place. Even if we get away with it, it's kind of smelly.”

“Yeah, I know. Nothing about this has been optimal.” May's hand tightened around the wheel, looking for where to pull out into the street. There was a flash of light in the air and she instinctively looked up at it, knowing planes this low and close to the capital were a rare and usually worrying business.

It wasn't a plane, and it was followed by an enormous rushing of sound – the speed barrier audibly cracking as it approached. The light snapped again and Koenig yelled something unintelligible, pulling himself up into the passenger seat next to May with surprisingly fast grace. The vehicle stopped and May felt the back end bash into and almost through the asphalt below. She spun around in the driver's seat and saw the slim, gleaming metal humanoid curling itself around the Latverian envoy through the stripped-away roof of the vehicle.

Red robotic eyes gleamed at her from under a strip of sickly green. “ _Latveria recalls its envoy home. There will be no negotiation on this point.”_ The crackling, monotone voice paused before continuing. _“His Majesty, the King of Latveria, sends you, SHIELD, our gratitude for your service freely rendered. Hostilities are hereby ceased for the time being.”_

The vehicle creaked and tore further as the thing lifted away from the ruins of the car, the unconscious von Bardas clutched close to it. There was a shimmer in the air to mark the moment when the construct cloaked itself, and the distant rumble of something leaving at high speeds.

“I quit,” said Koenig, in the creaking silence after its departure. He blinked rapidly. “I don't quit, but I want a drink. A really, really big one.”

“You gonna drink because we just sat here and watched a robot take our kidnapped diplomat, or because the other plan apparently worked out?” She let go of the wheel of the car, deciding to accept what happened with as much of her usual stoicism as she could muster.

Sam dug around in his pockets for the keys to the car he brought to the Arboretum, since this one was utterly trashed. “Agent May, I don't even freakin' know. You?”

May studied Sam Koenig's face with a serene expression. “I'm gonna go with the worry that maybe she was right after all.”

. . .

The cat kept running, running, never looking back to see how close the king's tin soldiers were to his heels. Hard enough to gain necessary distance when he pelted out the doors of the castle. The constructs were quick – but even under duress, he was clever. He used every trick his exhausted mind was still capable of pulling together, flinging himself from shadow to windowsill to tree and eventually finding a single stroke of luck by all but falling into another vehicle that was going east. East, blessed direction that he knew could get him out. Though at this point, he'd take any road, and find his way home through the wilderness some other way.

As the wide truck and its tarp-covered load trundled out of the city, the cat shivered and hunkered under the yellow plastic, wild eyes keeping watch on the sky and the smaller drones that littered it. Loki's cat-sense _swore_ the inhuman soldiers were still right on top of him, no doubt cloaked to not trouble the citizenry, and his tiny heart throbbed painfully in his chest as he waited for some command through the drones to make the vehicle stop. If that came, he didn't know what he was going to do – the constructs would simply peel his exhausted form from the truck.

There was no way he could find the focus to change back, not yet. It was taking all his last scraps of pure, iron will just to keep the tether between his two selves in place. No, better to use his energy willing his animal nature into submission. Until a few moments of real peace. Until he knew the steel beasts were not within range.

His fortune bore out, or perhaps using the drones to stop the truck wasn't fair by the monstrous king's mad rules – perhaps there was to be only the chase, as he'd proclaimed. He couldn't know; the man in the steel suit was both mystery and horror. He only knew in his bones what would be done to him should he be caught.

The vehicle continued to trundle down almost the exact same route he'd taken to arrive and no signal came from the smaller drones above. No kindly-natured little girl this time, only the company of the rushing blood in his ears. But just a little time, just a little more, and he could flee across the border. There, perhaps, he'd be safe.

. . .

Natasha's last contact with the Director told her to keep in range, that there _had_ been some sort of development. _Operation successful. Extract Loki, if necessary,_ said part of his message. There was an undertone of worry in the message, and it made her eyes narrow to read it. They narrowed further at the other implication – that the demigod had done his part. Took SHIELD's side, just as she'd been told all along, and chose to help. Despite everything she'd known about his role in the formation of the Avengers, here was the culmination of what she'd seen since getting May's call. It didn't jibe, and yet, there was the proof. Still, she stayed close and kept careful watch on the border, spending the time sorting her tangle of thoughts.

There was a clamor near dark, just meters away and on the other side of the clearing she hadn't dared cross. She pulled her binoculars out to try and get eyes on it, seeing a gleam of metal rushing after something small. With a curse under her breath and her orders on her mind, she charged across the small field with her hood pulled low across her forehead. Red eyes swept across her and then vanished. Their interest ended at the official border. They would not cross, not for this. But whatever they were chasing had made it through.

She scrounged through the thick, dry grass and finally saw it – saw _him_.

The cat's regal fur was matted in thick clumps and there was white, dry froth on his lips. His tail was full of dry prickers and broken straw, and he'd torn a few claws to shreds on rough terrain and who knew what else. An eye that was clouded with exhaustion and what she thought could have been fear rolled up to look at her, still locked in a thin ring of green and mostly black. The mouth creaked open, but the cat couldn't even meow. It was one of the most pitiful things she'd ever seen.

Natasha knelt over the animal, studying him, knowing that Loki was still in there. The eyes still had that odd flicker of something else, but she remembered his warnings. He might be teetering on the very edge of some spiritual abyss. “You did it,” she said, her voice calm and empty.

Another weak attempt at a meow.

“Haven't gotten the full word, but something happened back home. You did that much. Kept your word, huh?” The eye didn't leave her. She looked into it, then looked down at the tangled mane along the bare throat. “The job's done.” Then she smiled gently down at him as the paws kept flexing weakly. “Do you know that, right now, I could kill you and get away with it? You can't even talk, and with you, that was at least half the threat.”

The ring of green in his eyes faded even further into dead, staring black.

“I can just reach down and snap your neck, Loki. With one hand. Just one hand for everything you did to us. To me. To Barton. Did you think that's all paid for because you found your way into Coulson's house?”

One paw reached out to pat at the ground, no energy left to pull itself away from her and her threat. She watched him struggle, the old, buried anger draining and replacing itself with the hard-earned mercies of her own second life. “Easiest kill of my career.” No. The past wasn't paid for – but this wouldn't cash it out, either. He'd done his part. She would finish hers. That was the fair deal. That was the chance everyone got. She stood up with a sigh, towering over him. “I just wanted you to know that.”

Then she reached down and gently picked up the heaving cat around his middle, hauling him up to her shoulder and carrying him down the trail back to the borrowed van.

. . .

Natasha knew he changed back when the stench of fear and ozone and sweat grew to fill the entire van instead of just the old towel she'd placed the cat on. She wrinkled her nose as she kept driving back towards the city. “Ew. Couldn't you have waited to do that until we got to the airport? It's cruddy, but I know from personal experience they've got showers.”

The bone-weary voice filtered up from the rear of the van. “I utterly, truly didn't wish to. I'm done with that shape. I risked too much. No more.”

She glanced over as he pulled himself forward along the floor of the vehicle, wedging himself against the back of the passenger seat. His half-lidded green eyes met hers. “You need something?” she asked him.

“I need a bottle of water and a meal. I expect I'll vomit both back up promptly.” He managed to give her a weak grin. She could see his hands when he pulled a knee up to steady himself. They looked torn, the tips of his fingers bleeding and raw. “Then I'll need a bottle of water, a meal, and to sleep for approximately a week.”

She gave a dry snort. “You're going to need a raincheck on most of that sleeping. You get a good look at infamous touristy Latveria?”

“I did. Fair point. I'm going to be in debrief for _ages_.” He tilted his head back, the knotted, tangling hair leaving trails of sweat on his face. He managed a low, rattling laugh. It sounded almost human. “Hah. I'll settle for a short nap on the plane well away from this damned place. Then I sleep for a week after I'm done telling my tale seventeen different ways.”

“Are you kidding? Catnap while you can. They'll ship you onto some other odd job within days, guaranteed.”

Natasha heard him shift in response to her prediction. “Don't I get vacation time?”

She checked the road for safety before leveling him a wry glance. “Between everything we've got going on globally and getting interested testy customers from across the galaxy partially due to _some idiot_ I could name... no. You're not getting vacation time. Nobody gets vacation time. Your life is now motels and airport lobbies and politicians with bad haircuts and awful morals. Welcome to SHIELD.”

The van rumbled across the bumpy asphalt for a few moments. Then, so quiet she almost missed it, he said, “Well. It still beats the hell out of my _last_ career choice.”

She almost veered off the road.


	20. Epilogue: The Wolf at the Door

Natasha saw him in the exit bay of the Playground as she prepared to depart, not really lurking as he waited for her. He had something under his arm, some narrow bag that crinkled a lighter brown against the plain black jacket he wore. She crossed her arms and walked up to him, studying his pale face much as he studied hers. “So, has debriefing been fun?”

“An absolute _joy._ It yet continues, but I suppose I must endure.” Loki gave her a thin smirk before taking the item from under his arm and presenting it to her in a way that was almost awkward and diffident both. “I don't expect you to accept this, but I offer it regardless. A mark of some gratitude for not killing me when you had all the chance and more. For your meet next with Agent May.”

Curious enough to at least find out what it was that the demigod considered a peace offering, she took the heavy item and studied it. A bottle. She could tell that much just by the way its weight changed and sloshed in her hands. She spoke without looking up for more than a quick glance. “You tell Coulson what I said to you?”

“No, I didn't.” Loki clasped both hands behind his back, looking down at her with a mild, considering expression. “If that's the least you do to me this year, that's well more than I could hope for. No doubt, by your reckoning, more than I deserve.”

Her brows furrowed as she pulled the neck of the bottle free of the bag to peek, then widened as she realized what it was. “ _Starka,”_ she said, letting her surprise stay visible as she read the tan paper label on the rare Polish rye vodka. “You can't even import this. How the hell did you get it?”

“I cheat.” He shrugged, the shoulders moving light and offhandedly. “That much has not changed.”

She lifted her face to look at him again, letting the bottle slide back into its bag. Her next question was blunt. “What the hell happened to you?”

Another shrug, this one more rueful. At first she thought he wasn't going to respond. “I... remember what you said. When I was in a glass cage, with you on the other side. That hour I targeted you with crudity and rudeness. I don't simply look for openings when I attack, I _listen._ You talked of red in your ledger, yes, used the truth of your story to lure me out. Blood red from all the things you've done, and that painted you into a target.” He studied her when she didn't interrupt him. “And when that debt came due, your friend... that Barton, who I've also done ill by, yes, he made another call. You took that chance he offered and you walked away from what you'd been. I heard you. I listened, and I marked it down well. At the time, no, it would not have been for good cause. But I did not forget.”

He lifted a dark eyebrow. “This is a rhetorical, you owe me no answer – is there still not the night where you might wake up, afraid the past will knock again and drag you into the darkness? That the wolves will never entirely leave your door?”

The question alone told her his answer. But yes, there was a truth there. She could hear the shape of the story behind it, and there was some familiarity in the tale. She looked away and tucked the bottle under her own arm. “We're not friends.”

He uttered a sharp, short laugh. “Not hardly.”

Her free hand lifted a single finger in warning. “Behave yourself.”

“Absolutely not.” The laugh narrowed itself into a thin, wry smile. He bowed his head once, low, in the start of a farewell.

Natasha Romanoff nodded back, bobbing her knotted red hair. “Under the circumstances, that's probably the best answer.” She swept the bay with a quick glance, her travel bag on one shoulder and her other hand coming up to steady the bottle under her arm. Damn right she was keeping it. The last time she'd found a bottle of _starka_... well. “I still don't know what I'm telling Clint.” She glanced at him one more time. “Because it's way better I explain this to him, than he find out like I did. I'll keep it low otherwise, like Phil asked. But I have to tell him. He deserves to know.”

“Perhaps I should have found a second bottle, then, for _that_ conversation.”

That gave her a laugh, an honest one. “He's not that classy. A crappy domestic six-pack and he'll be fine.” She shook her head and started to move towards the monitored door out. “Though by the end of it _I_ might need one. Oh, well.” She shrugged, not looking back. “Tell May her new sense of humor still sucks.”

The drawling voice caught up with her, a sardonic ghost. “I find I _like_ living.”

Another laugh, this one light and bell-like, followed the spy on her way out the door and into the greater world once more.

. . .

The rec room and its warm kitchen was doubling as an ad hoc bar as the hours ticked towards midnight. Director Coulson slouched in a seat by the small fridge, his suit jacket off and his tie half-undone. To his left was Agent May in a comfortable dark tank-top and to his right was the less-tired looking Skye. Across was Loki, still worn and again unusually pale, the sharp face floating above a black shirt of his own. The table between them was littered with beer bottles, two half-full pints of whiskey, and cartons of reheated Korean takeout from a tiny South Carolina dive. May brought food back for everyone in the core team via an abrupt use of the smaller plane she didn't want to expand on, claiming it was part of finishing off some little loose ends.

May put her cards down. “Full house.”

“Awwwwww.” Skye dropped her set while Coulson chuckled. “So much for my bluffing skills.”

“You're dreadful at it,” Loki told her.

“I really am.” She reached out and grabbed a corn chip, gesturing at him with it. “Come on, you're still in?”

“No. Two pair. I thought I had something.” The demigod sighed and pushed the results of his lost bet further in. “This is why I don't gamble easily.”

“You can never win them all,” said May through a thin smirk.

“Is that the lesson for the month?”

Director Coulson ran a finger along the side of his nose, sighing. “Might be.” He looked to May at his side. “We got Latveria off us for now, but at what cost?” He shook his head, reaching out for his beer and finding it depressingly empty. To remedy that, he tilted half out his chair and hooked the fridge open, barely managing to snag a cold one. “The more I think about it, the more I think the real shake-out of all this is that Doom guy marking us out on his mental map with big bold letters. Don't think I like how I feel about that. I don't know what we could have done differently, not without losing a lot of our people, but there it is. Anyone else?”

Skye lifted a hand. He snaked out another beer for her.

“To have his eye turned toward you may well be a waiting threat, yes.” Loki's voice went quiet. He let May take his discarded hand away from him, reaching out for one of the whiskey bottles himself. “I saw those eyes, and there was no kindness in them, much less humanity. What that lord does, he does solely for what _he_ perceives is the best and most righteous route. He has a care for his people, but it's a cold and distant care. Like a god over good-natured livestock. He has plans for their lives, whether they have a will or not.” His mouth twisted into a dour smile as he filled his glass. “I'd know.”

“Your brief did read pretty hairy.” May folded the cards back together into a neat pile, preparing to deal for the next round. She ignored the snickers that followed her words.

That got her a sharp look. “Please tell me that was an unintentional jest, a pun not meant to be at my expense.”

She lifted an eyebrow as she split the pile in half. “I'll never tell.”

Skye giggled from across the table at Loki's sigh. “Was it necessary to pin _that_ picture of me from Ms. Romanoff's phone in the hall?”

Coulson nearly choked on his new beer at the weariness in the voice. “Absolutely. Official orders.” His chest heaved in a quiet laugh when the demigod's piercing stare turned toward him. “Oh, come on. I'm probably never gonna see something like that again.”

“If I have any say about it, no.” Loki slumped in his seat, checking the cards dealt to him. At his side, Skye mumbled her opening bet. He put his cards back down with a grimace. “No saving that hand,” he said, pushing the cards back into the center. “I lose my taste for the game for the night, I apologize.”

“It's not the cat joke, is it?”

He shook his head. Arriving back at the Playground had seen him with a meal in his stomach and a brief nap, but there had been no hiding the exhaustion still deeply marking his face. “The jests ultimately do not bother me. I understand the perspective. But I find that Latveria does.”

“He saw through magic.” Skye took a chug off her beer. “Your magic. That had to be a nasty knock.”

“More than you can realize. SHIELD collectively may have his eye, yes – and now so do I.” He slumped further, crossing his arms as the trio bet against each other. “We knew there were possibilities. Your Strange. That Vernei. Yet still, I did not expect him. The humanity he lacked might have been his own bargained chip for the abilities he holds, thus proving the rumors. Well, it seems at least he did not expect me, either. That bought me time to run.” He shook his head, a stray strand of hair falling into his face. “Your world holds more dangers than any here or in the galaxy realize. When one situation resolves, a thousand more arise, and from angles never considered. Are you, are we truly prepared for the future that is coming?”

“Oh God, he's getting his morose on.” Skye grabbed another corn chip from the bowl. “Here we go.”

That broke the downward spiral, the dour expression filtering into an unwilling smirk. “Oh, very well. Leave the dire predictions for another night. You'd prefer another topic?”

“Well, since shapeshifting is now a thing, what was the deal with the horse? I've been wanting to ask that _for-ev-errrr_.”

Loki unfolded his arms, staring at her. “I'm sure I don't know what you mean.”

“Skye.” Coulson didn't know whether to be horrified or to just let it ride. _Oh crap, another unintentional pun._ He bit his lip, then decided to drink his beer and hope the urge to laugh passed.

Skye didn't notice the attempt to divert her. “Did you get to that bit in the Norse myths yet?” She looked around the table as Loki pulled out his phone, the white screen indicating it was probably Google he was navigating quickly through. “I mean, I'm totally prepared to not believe it...”

The phone clattered to the table in front of the outraged demigod at the search results. “What in Hel is _wrong_ with this planet?”

“You're on it, you tell us. I mean, given a chance to talk, you usually do.”

“ _I did not give birth to a horse_!”

“Well, there it is.” Skye gestured at the table in front of him. “On the record.”

“ _Why_ would you even think to ask me _that_?”

“I was curious?” She giggled loudly at his aghast expression.

A long hand passed across his forehead. “Oh Gods, if I have earned any largesse amongst this crowd, change the topic yet again and immediately. I beg you.”

. . .

_“This is Ali Velshi for Real Money on Al-Jazeera America. Breaking news tonight, both Roxxon Oil and its Brand division took a nasty tumble on the stock market this morning on rumors that the long-time king of the fuel world is looking at allegations of international interference in the politics of multiple countries. Not only are established OPEC countries are starting to speak out, but even Vladimir Putin is coming forward and claiming that Roxxon, established in the early years of World War II, has been fooling around with pressuring everyone from Hungary through the Ukraine and, yes, even Putin's Russia itself. This is dispelling the even zanier rumors that suggest this has something to do with the tiny, secretive Latverian nation._

_“Roxxon has a history of turning itself around from even the worst knocks, but this one's gonna have ramifications for a while to come, if they bear out. Dario Agger, the current CEO, is being summoned to Capitol Hill next week to testify...”_

. . .

Clint turned the still-cold but mostly drained can of beer over in his broad hands, studying the label without actually reading it. He still didn't know what he felt. Next to him on the ratty couch was Natasha, an empty bottle of some better pedigree of beer dangling from a finger trapped in its neck. “Just one question.”

“Just one?” She smirked and leaned out to put the bottle on the dinged up old plywood table. The ugliest centerpiece in Barton's favorite Brooklyn nest. “God, Barton, you know you can afford actual wood, right? And cleaning spray?”

“Just one.” He finished his beer and slumped back against the couch, looking at her. The whole wild story was ringing in his ears. From her, he knew he didn't have a choice but to believe it. Still. “Are you _kidding_ me?”

“I know, right?” With a laugh, she pulled out her phone and showed him the picture she took at the edge of Romania.

He took her phone to stare at it more closely, rubbing two calloused archer's fingers across his eyebrows. Yeah, it was still somehow definitely _that_ guy. He was stuck between disgust and weirded-out amusement. “I don't understand anything anymore.”

“It's a brave new world, Clint. Doesn't change what we're needed for.”

“Doesn't it? Nat, come on. We're having a hard time keeping up.”

She shrugged, unruffled by his doubt. “Gods and kings. I know. But none of them mean anything without the people to hold them together. Without the hard lessons we fight for. We keep the light on, when all other candles go out.” She gave a quiet little laugh, pulling a knee up to her chin. “It's the essence of the human experience. Nobody can take that away from us. When kings topple and gods falter, it's up to the people to pick it all back up. We can change, we can drive others to change. Change is everything. Evolution. Adaptation. It's our nature. It's the one thing we bring to every table.”

Barton watched her as she talked, still thinking about putting an arrow in the demigod's eye. “And you think hedid. He changed, at least partially because Coulson and his folks are decent people. That good old human spirit can conquer all.” He watched her shrug, not able to keep the disbelief out his voice. “Nat.”

“I do.” She looked across the room, out the window into the warm New York night. “I really do. There's some hope in that. Y'know. For everyone.” She looked back at him with a laugh. “More beer?”

He studied her, remembering the other person she'd been, one on the very edge of killing him without remorse. He'd taken that chance anyway, taken a risk on her without a whisper of hesitation or wondering what that might mean for the future. There'd been something else in her, something other than just what the Black Widow program instilled into its broken kids. He couldn't put a finger on it then, still had a hard time narrowing it down sometimes, but he guessed he understood Phil Coulson's love of the second chance rhetoric anyway.

The core of Loki's story was the same, listening to her distill it. As much as he didn't want to believe that, she was all the proof he really needed. Sitting right next to him. The best friend he'd ever had. “Absolutely more beer.”

. . .

Victor von Doom regarded his prisoner in the deep cells below the castle, the eyes in the silvery mask pitiless and curious both. He understood, he thought, her long-hidden fury with him. The bitter costs of the kingdom he forged, and she blamed him for that steep price. “Do you not see, Lucia? That the fury you turned on me was but the same we could have shared, endured with you?”

“All I wanted was to save the world from you,” she whispered dully, not looking up from the rough stone beneath her feet.

“And all we...” He tilted his steel face inside his green cowl, allowing himself a single moment of attempted humanity to offer his once-loyal servant. “That _I_ want, old friend, is to save the world from itself. And from all the threats beyond it. All paths end in despair. Except one, Lucia. Save the one I can make. There are no other choices. No others that can turn a fated path into a new, golden road.”

“I don't care what you think you see in your dreams. You're damned, Victor. You sold out to demons, and you paid with my father's blood to do it.”

“To protect myself from other, greater demons. I've seen those futures, Lucia. In them all, everything burns. There is only the striding god and his infinite power. The emptiness that follows him close. The _end_. I understand sacrifice, to stop the flood that might drown us all. Had you shared trust with me, not merely squandered it in pettiness and revenge, you would be in the great hall with me now, preparing to save not only a world, but perhaps a universe entire.”

“You talk of nothing but madness. I've listened to you before. There is no one on this planet that thinks like you. No _thing_ like you. Forget your dreams of the universe, Victor. What about what the people need? My people. Yours... I suppose.”

Doom thought of the cat, the creature that survived against his stacked odds. That strange pet of SHIELD's – yes, he would find that trail again. And he smiled within the mask. “Again, Lucia. I believe you are wrong. In your anger, you nearly destroyed what I might have saved. The stability of the world, in the hours before darkness comes. As it is for our own people, we cannot trouble their peace overmuch. You nearly cost everyone that, by stirring me to fury.”

“Damn you, Victor. I don't want to hear your justifications. Do what you will to me. It doesn't matter anymore.”

Doom put a steely hand on the bars, looking down at his servant. The gulf between them was too vast. She would not see. Not with the eyes she had now. The moment of humanity drifted away, leaving only Doom and his fire-forged resolve. “We will not let you go, Lucia. You will serve us again. We will ensure your faith in us is... strengthened. And you will ever be our glory.”

He turned and looked at his staff, those fine, gleaming robots and their tools. “Remake her,” he told them. “The future calls its soldiers to war.”

_~ Fin_

“ _All warfare is based on deception.” ~ Sun Tzu_

_3/9/15 MDS. All relevant rights remain in the hands of Marvel with no infringement intended. All realities are fair game. All half-mad demigods do whatever the hell they want._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's clearly something wrong with me in that I wanted to write a story where Loki shapeshifted into a cat (while making it read as serious business and not too goofy), so I just blithely pull together all this weird Tom Clancy action to go with it. Like 'ooo, here's this fairly sincere murder/spy drama and now there's DOOMBOTS AND SHAPESHIFTING AND NOW YOU'RE THINKING OF LOKI'S CAT BUTTHOLE.' 
> 
> Man, I don't even know. Thanks for coming along for the ride. And sorry about that. Next time will be less weird. Or more weird. One of those.
> 
> I do Skye (Daisy Johnson) a major disservice here. When the comic universe's Lucia von Bardas moves against SHIELD and the rest of the world in 2004's Secret War event (during which time Vic is in _actual Hell_ ), it's Daisy's actions that stop the overt threat. Although the rest of the story is a pretty grim one about Nick Fury's willingness to cut throats, any throats, to do what he thinks needed to be done. Well, there's always next time.
> 
> Dario Agger is the current CEO of Roxxon in the comics, and unlike here, the dude is a literal freaking minotaur. (maybe he is in Codexville, and I just haven't figured that out yet) He is a pretty angry dude, however. As a relatively new character, you can find him in the pages of the latest version of Thor (yes, that one, which is actually really fun), brokering deals with, weirdly enough, the Dark Elf prince Malekeith and the Jotun.
> 
> Hans Stutgart is an actual Latverian agent from the comics, but a pretty minor one. I don't feel bad about killing him off. This time, I just picked his name off a list while I was researching Latveria and said 'you die on page one.' Maybe he liked puppies. This version liked teaching kids. And in my head, Aimee Rodgers grows up just fine. Though she never forgets about the death of her teacher, and the weird guy that came to question her about it. Maybe she got a note someday about that. I don't know for certain. But's it's possible.
> 
> Latveria's secretiveness, location, and history is cobbled together from all sorts of sources. Also, I studied Google Maps alongside some Marvel map sketches long enough to probably end up on some kind of watch list. Vic's not real into the tourism industry, and he's got a bigger fetish for naming things after himself than Queen Victoria. Gotta say this for Vic; where most villains run their mouth about taking over a country and aiming high with their future goals, Doctor Doom gets it done. He's also sometimes a terrific example of a well-intentioned extremist. In the comics, Doom often genuinely believes he's the last great hope for mankind. And, like others of that stripe, it's not always clear that he's in the wrong. Though his methods are... um... yeah.
> 
> He's got some creepy ways of showing his interest and affection for people.
> 
> The Codex is going on a brief hiatus until after Age of Ultron & the AoS season finale while I try to focus on my own work, although I still have stories planned out. There's probably a one-shot coming online in the near future (angsty little fluff piece), and as for the next full-length story, I can tell you this much: _By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth!_


End file.
